At twice the size of a wedge-tailed eagle, the newly discovered Dynatoaetus gaffae would have competed with thylacines and Tasmanian devils for prey.
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Articles on Australian fauna
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A new list of 404 Australian mammal species is a crucial conservation step in the face of the ongoing extinction crisis.
An analysis of the skull suggests the ankylosaur may have had a poorer sense of smell than its counterparts in the northern hemisphere.
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.
These fascinating spiders only live for about a year and have particularly interesting family arrangements.
Millipede means ‘1,000 feet’, but until now the name was a bit of an exaggeration.
When a plant is stressed, it mobilises its resources and often converts its starch reserves back to sugar. As soon as this happens, the stressed plant becomes sweeter than its healthier neighbours.
Spiny-tailed skinks, also known as meelyu, are culturally significant to the Badimia people in Western Australia. But habitat degradation and mining have put them at threat of extinction.
Once thought to occur only in birds and mammals in the Northern Hemisphere, due to the more pronounced winters, we now know torpor is widespread in small Australian mammals.
Tooth fossils from NSW have confirmed sauropods weren’t exclusive to Queensland. They’re also providing a first look at how these colossal dinosaurs fed from Australia’s land.
Breeding pairs spend a great deal of time roosting together and the male often gently strokes the female with his beak.
The invasive species was likely brought to Australia unintentionally by ship. Now found in every state and territory, the wasps are decimating our ecosystems.
Wet and bulky cattle dung is very unlike marsupial dung that Australian dung beetles are adapted to deal with, meaning native dung beetles tend to leave it alone. But help from abroad is at hand.
The main food for the mountain pygmy-possum’s spring/summer breeding season is the migratory bogong moth, but in 2017 and 2018 billions of bogong moths failed to arrive. Then the bushfires did.
Australia’s snakes, spiders and other venomous critters tend to strike fear in many people. But is Australia’s reputation as a nation of deadly creatures deserved?
When is a galah not a galah? That depends on which scientific name is attached to the Australian bird. There’s been some confusion over this, which DNA testing has finally solved.
At least 100,000 insects are among the many Australian species still to be formally identified. That’s a problem for any biosecurity experts who need to be able to spot potentially invasive bugs.
Top contributors
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Senior lecturer, University of New England
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PhD Candidate in Palaeontology, University of New England
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Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne
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Deputy Director and ARC Future Fellow, Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, University of Adelaide
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Professor in Evolutionary Biology (jointly appointed with South Australian Museum), Flinders University
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Senior lecturer, University of Sydney
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Research Director and Curator, Australian National Wildlife Collection, CSIRO, Canberra, CSIRO
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Associate Professor, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland
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Palaeontologist, Earth Science Faculty, University of New England
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Distinguished Professor and Director, Trophic Cascades Program, Oregon State University
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Director of the Australian National Insect Collection, CSIRO
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Associate Professor, Vertebrate Palaeontology Group, Flinders University
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Lecturer at Flinders University, The University of Western Australia
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Environmental Scientist - Fauna, Parks Victoria; Honorary Fellow, School of BioSciences, The University of Melbourne
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Curator of Mammals, Western Australian Museum
