Monsters reveal how societies define and punish deviance. Wintering’s widows make me think about the women I know who are strong and wise in ways neither recognised nor endorsed by the mainstream.
It’s remarkable to see these three innovative, bravely experimental and often unsettling Australian story collections – by a debut author and two prize-winners – published so closely together.
Model of a thylacine at the Australian Museum.
Shutterstock
Australia still feels the thylacine’s presence in its landscape, wildlife and culture. A new book explores everything we know about the thylacine and the hope of a return.
A new biotech partnership could bring the first baby thylacine to life within 10 years. But de-extinction is controversial – should we even be doing this?
The numbat is one of the Tasmanian tiger’s closest surviving relatives. And its newly sequenced genome raises the possibility of piecing together the genetic code of its extinct fellow marsupial.
Smithsonian Institution/colourised by D.S. Rovinsky
The “Tasmanian tiger” was hunted to extinction based on its perceived size as a predator big enough to take sheep. But it seems this was just a tall tale, and the thylacine weighed just 16.7kg.
George Stubbs, ‘The Kongouro from New Holland’ (1772), oil painting, detail of head.
Ashley Van Haeften/Wikimedia Commons
Kangaroos are a national icon, but Australian authors seem determined to kill them off.
This pin cushion made from the jawbone of a thylacine won second prize in the handicraft section of the Glamorgan Show in 1900.
Courtesy Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
The new Tasmanian tiger genome reveals some fascinating facts about this extinct marsupial, including why they were so similar to dogs, and how they were growing more vulnerable to genetic disease.
In 2012 scientists succeeded in filming for the first time ever a giant squid in its natural habitat.
EPA/NHK/NEP/DISCOVERY CHANNEL/AAP
Searching for animals thought to be extinct – or fictional – is difficult, painstaking and often disappointing. But new technology like drones offer hope of a boom in biological discovery.
Alb Quarrell holding his prized thylacine kill, 1921.
Courtesty Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Australia accounts for one-third of all contemporary mammal extinctions worldwide. At least ten species and six subspecies of Australian marsupials have become extinct following European settlement, and…
A Tasmanian tiger is strung up by its hind legs.
AAP/Supplied
Dingoes were twice the size of female thylacines and could have caused their extinction on mainland Australia through direct attacks, a new Sydney [study](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0034877?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+plosone%2FEvolutionaryBiology+(PLoS+ONE+Alerts%3A+Evolutionary+Biology…
Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University