Marsupials - Artensterben

Dactylonax kambuayai – eine von zwei Beuteltierarten, die wiederentdeckt wurden

A female Dactylonax kambuayai from the Klalik area on the Vogelkop Peninsula. The species is one of two marsupial species recently rediscovered alive after being known only from fossils for a long time. (© Foto: Carlos Bocos, edited, aus: Flannery et al. 2026, Records of the Australian Museum, CC BY 4.0)

7. March 2026 Doreen Fräßdorf

New Guinea: Two marsupials lost for 6,000 years rediscovered

In March 2026, an Australian research team led by zoologist Tim Flannery published two studies with surprising results: On the remote Vogelkop Peninsula in northwestern New Guinea, two marsupial species were found alive that had previously been known only from fossils approximately 6,000 to 7,500 years old. Such rediscoveries are

A red fox carrying a squirrel in its mouth, a symbol of the hunting success of this highly adaptable predator, which in Australia became a threat to numerous endemic animal species. (© NPS Photo/Kent Miller, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

19. October 2025 Doreen Fräßdorf

From 60 to 1.7 Million: How the Red Fox Conquered Australia in Just 60 Years

When European settlers of British origin brought the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) to Australia from around 1870 onward, they were thinking of tradition, not ecological consequences. Hunting foxes with packs of hounds, then a deeply rooted social ritual in England and now banned, was meant to continue in the new

Slender-billed curlew: Now declared extinct with the update of the IUCN Red List 2025

Slender-billed Curlew: The migratory bird once bred in western Siberia and wintered around the Mediterranean. Missing since 1995, its extinction has now been officially confirmed by the IUCN – the first human-caused bird extinction on mainland Europe in modern times. (© Internet Archive Book Images, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

11. October 2025 Doreen Fräßdorf

IUCN Red List 2025: Eight more animal species officially extinct

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) presented a new update of the Red List of Threatened Species on 10 October 2025 – this time at the World Conservation Congress in Abu Dhabi. The updated list now includes 172,620 species worldwide, among them 48,646 classified as threatened and 935

Östliches Irmawallaby oder Greys Wallaby

Its external features gave the toolache wallaby a distinctly elegant appearance, which was described appreciatively even by settlers who otherwise had little interest in Australian animals. (© John Gould, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

13. July 2025 Doreen Fräßdorf

Toolache Wallaby: The most beautiful, elegant and agile of all wallabies

British naturalist Frederic Wood Jones, who spent many years in Australia, called Grey’s wallaby, also known as the toolache wallaby, “probably the most beautiful and elegant of all wallabies” in 1924. The high-contrast facial markings, the banded fur on the back and the overall fine gray tone of the coat

Nacktbrustkänguru (Caloprymnus campestris)

Desert rat-kangaroo at the Museum of Central Australia: at 25 to 28 centimeters in body length (excluding the tail), the species was slightly larger than a house rat. (© Mark Marathon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

25. February 2025 Doreen Fräßdorf

The Desert Rat-kangaroo—Found, Lost, Found and Lost Again…

For the Wangkangurru, an Aboriginal people, the desert rat-kangaroo (Ngudlukanta) had been known for thousands of years. But Western science only became aware of the marsupial from the rat-kangaroo family (Potoroidae) in the 1840s, when the then governor of South Australia, George E. Grey, sent three specimens to the naturalist

Scientists discovered a well-preserved thylacine head with tissue in a museum in Melbourne, Australia. This museum find could help revive the extinct thylacine using genetic methods. (© Westell, William Percival, 1874-1937, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

17. October 2024 Doreen Fräßdorf

Putrid Museum Find Reveals 99.9% of Thylacine Genome

Researchers recently found a long-overlooked bucket in the back of a Melbourne Museum cabinet, containing a well-preserved thylacine head stored in ethanol for over 110 years. Andrew Pask, head of the Tigrr Lab at the University of Melbourne, described the sight as “gruesome” in an interview with The Guardian, noting

tasmanischer beutelwolf Thylacinus cynocephalus

Male and female thylacine, photographed around 1904 at the Washington, D.C., National Zoo. Between 1850 and 1936, 68 thylacines are documented to have lived in zoos. (© Baker; E.J. Keller., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

1. September 2024 Doreen Fräßdorf

Thylacine

Tasmanian wolf or Tasmanian tiger: Neither wolf nor tiger Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman, who in 1642 was the first European to reach the island of Tasmania, reported “footprints, not unlike the claws of a tiger”. In doing so he had discovered the island’s top predator, which later became known under

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)

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)

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

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)

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