19th Century - Page 3 of 3

Falklandwolf (Dusicyon australis) im Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden

A specimen of the Falkland Islands wolf collected in 1843. It is now located at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden (Netherlands). (© Dusicyon australis (Kerr, 1792), collected in Falkland Islands (Malvinas) by Naturalis Biodiversity Center, CC0 1.0, via GBIF)

6. June 2021 Doreen Fräßdorf

Falkland Islands wolf

How did the Falkland Islands wolf reach the Falkland Islands? As early as 1690, British visitors to the Falkland Islands wondered about the only land mammal living there among all the small creatures. There were not even mice there. What did this wolf feed on? The British naturalist Charles Darwin,

An illustration of the bluebuck, created between October 1777 and March 1786. Image: Robert Jacob Gordon, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

14. May 2021 Doreen Fräßdorf

Bluebuck

Rarer in museums than previously thought “Also running on the high mountains are many kinds of wild bucks and goats, such as gemsbok, blue bucks, pied bucks, roe bucks, klipspringers, ibexes, wild bucks,” it says in Johann Schreyer’s Neue Ost-Indianische Reisz-Beschreibung from 1681. This is the first time that “blue

This is what the Atlas bear may have looked like. (© Nicolas Maréchal, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

2. August 2018 Doreen Fräßdorf

Atlas bear

Beast hunts in the Roman Empire The Atlas bear is believed to have lived in the North African Atlas Mountains and the adjacent regions of Libya, Algeria, and Morocco. There are no photos, scientific illustrations, museum specimens, or complete skeletons of the Atlas bear. What remains are subfossil bones from

Pseudophilautus pardus, considered extinct, is in fact not a distinct species, but a rare color variant of the living Pseudophilautus viridis. (© Buddhika.jm(Buddhika Mawella), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

19. March 2018 Doreen Fräßdorf

Pseudophilautus pardus (leopard shrub frog)

Frog with a leopard pattern? Sri Lanka’s amphibian fauna is known for its extraordinary diversity and high level of endemism. The genus Pseudophilautus in particular, which includes many directly developing frog species, has diversified strongly in the island’s isolated forest areas. Pseudophilautus pardus was scientifically described in 2007, based on

Drawing of the red gazelle from the 1899 book Great and Small Game of Africa. (© Rowland Ward, Limited. [d. 1912], Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

1. March 2018 Doreen Fräßdorf

Red gazelle

The last animal died in 1894 The Red gazelle is known only from the skins and bones of three male specimens, which are currently housed in museums in Paris and London. The last known individual of this species was likely killed by a hunter in 1894, as there have been