Australia - Page 3 of 4

The newly discovered scarab beetle species Semanopterus kingstoni was named after entomologist Tim Kingston, who had collected the only known specimen in 1979. (© Reid, Chris & TEES, NATALIE. (2023). A new, but possibly extinct, species of Semanopterus Hope, 1847 from Lord Howe Island, in the southwestern Pacific Ocean (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Dynastinae). Zootaxa. 5306. 563-570. 10.11646/zootaxa.5306.5.4.)

News

5. December 2023 Doreen Fräßdorf

New beetle species with unique trait discovered on island

Australian researchers recently discovered a previously unknown species of scarab beetle (Scarabaeidae) in the insect collection of the Australian Museum in Sydney. The specimen in question, a female, was collected on January 30, 1979 on Lord Howe, a small island of only 14 square kilometers in the southwest Pacific. The

Attenborough-Langschnabeligel (Zaglossus attenboroughi) wieder entdeckt

Like platypuses, echidnas are curious mammals: spiny hedgehog-like creatures with a long, toothless beak that also lay eggs. The photo shows the specimen of Attenborough's long-beaked echidna collected in 1961, which is now housed at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands. (© Naturalis Biodiversity Center, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

News

10. November 2023 Doreen Fräßdorf

Lost Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna rediscovered after more than 60 years

Until recently, only a single specimen of Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi) was known, collected by a Dutch botanist in 1961 in the forests of the Cyclops Mountains in western New Guinea. Now—62 years later—the shoebox-sized animal from the echidna family was tracked down again using camera traps. This was

Reptiles endemic to Christmas Island: Lister's gecko (left), Christmas Island forest skink (center), and Christmas Island blue-tailed skink (right). While the Christmas Island forest skink has been completely extinct since 2014, the other two species are extinct in the wild and survive only thanks to captive breeding programs. (© Biodiversity Heritage Library, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Reptiles

26. April 2023 Doreen Fräßdorf

Christmas Island forest skink

Another loss for Australia’s fauna The Christmas Island forest skink is, alongside the Christmas Island pipistrelle (2009) and the Bramble Cay melomys (between 2009 and 2011), among the most recent losses suffered by Australia’s wildlife. The last known Christmas Island forest skink was named Gump—a female that died in human

The broad-faced potoroo had gray-brown fur on the upper side with lighter hair tips, giving the coat a striped appearance. It was gray on the sides, while the underside and feet were light gray. (© John Gould, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Mammals

8. February 2023 Doreen Fräßdorf

Broad-faced Potoroo

Of hare-kangaroos, rat-kangaroos and true kangaroos The Australian broad-faced potoroo is not a kangaroo (Macropodidae) as we know it, but at family level a rat-kangaroo (Potoroidae) and at genus level a potoroo (Potorous). It is closely related to the true kangaroos, but differs from them in several respects. The rat-kangaroo

östlcihes hasenkänguru lagorchestes leporides

The image from 1853 is by John Gould, who first described the eastern hare-wallaby scientifically in 1841. (© John Gould, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Mammals

9. October 2022 Doreen Fräßdorf

Eastern Hare-Wallaby

Dancing hare down under Early settlers found a wide range of kangaroo-like marsupials on the plains of southeastern Australia—both huge animals that could incapacitate hunters with a single kick and animals smaller than hares. Alongside the now extinct toolache wallaby, hare-wallabies (Lagorchestes) were among the most popular game animals in

The Lord Howe Island cockroach (pictured), last observed in the 1930s, has now been rediscovered. (© Friendbuddypalchamp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

News

4. October 2022 Doreen Fräßdorf

Lord Howe Island cockroach rediscovered

The Lord Howe Island cockroach Panesthia lata, endemic to the Australian Pacific island of Lord Howe and not seen since the 1930s, was rediscovered in July 2022 when biologist Maxim Adams of the University of Sydney and his team visited the island. As the magazine Spektrum recently reported, they found

The nocturnal Maclear's rat was fairly large, with a body length of 21 to 26 centimeters and a tail length of up to 26.5 centimeters. The species was characterized by its black upright back hairs. (© Joseph Smit, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Mammals

24. April 2022 Doreen Fräßdorf

Maclear’s rat

On the vulnerability of rats The extinction of countless birds, mammals, and reptiles in modern times can be traced back to rats that arrived on European ships and expanded their range. In fact, however, there are also many species from the family of true mice and rats (Muridae) that have

Bramble Cay Mosaikschwanzratte (Melomys rubicola)

The Bramble Cay melomys reached a body length of 14 to 16 centimeters; its scaly, thin tail added another 14.5 to 18 centimeters. (© State of Queensland, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Mammals

31. July 2021 Doreen Fräßdorf

Bramble Cay melomys

The first victim of human-caused climate change The Bramble Cay melomys or mosaic-tailed rat is considered the first mammal species to be declared extinct primarily or exclusively because of anthropogenic climate change. It lived on the Torres Strait island of Bramble Cay, one of the most narrowly limited habitats imaginable.

Huia (Heteralocha acutirostris) - Illustration by Keulemans

Male huias (bottom) reached a length of around 45 centimeters, while female huias (top) measured between 48 and 55 centimeters. The illustration is by John G. Keulemans from Walter Buller's A History of the Birds of New Zealand (1873). (© John Gerrard Keulemans, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Birds

4. July 2021 Doreen Fräßdorf

Huia

When males and females look like two different species The particularly pronounced sexual dimorphism between female and male huia caused confusion in the past. It even went so far that the English ornithologist John Gould in 1836 described male and female huia as different species. Even today, scientists debate how

Perameles eremiana Wüsten-Langnasenbeutler

The holotype of the desert bandicoot preserved at the National Museum of Victoria in Melbourne. The species reached a head-body length of 18 to 28 centimeters. (© David Staples, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Mammals

2. May 2021 Doreen Fräßdorf

Desert Bandicoot

Desert bandicoot: Mulgaruquirra and Iwurra in Central Australia The Indigenous people of Australia living in the area of the city of Alice Springs called the desert bandicoot Mulgaruquirra, and among the Aborigines in the Charlotte Waters area the marsupial was called Iwurra. They knew the animal long before the British-Australian