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Specimen of the Week 223: The Tasmanian wolf
One of the most interesting things about zoology for me is the way in which skulls are sculpted by evolutionary and environmental forces. A particularly fascinating outcome of such processes is...
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Specimen of the Week 224: The Rock Wallaby Skull
Rock wallaby skull. LDUCZ-Z845 The high octane pop-rock band The B52s are responsible for one of the world’s most aggressive earworms – Rock Lobster. A tune so catchy that it takes no heed of the...
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Specimen of the Week 242 – the Marsupial Lion
Thylacoleo skull cast LDUCZ-Z3167 1) Large lion-shaped predators were living in Australia until around 50,000 years ago – lion-shaped, but not lions. This is because there were no wild cat species in...
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Specimen of the Week 283: The Eastern Quoll
Eastern quoll. LDUCZ-Z2307 Mongooses, ferrets, shrews, meerkats, otters, weasels and cats: These are animals that most people will be familiar with. Planigales, ningauis, kalutas, dunnarts, mulgaras...
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Specimen of the Week 306: The Bilby Skull
Bilby skull LDUCZ-Z82 Australia is widely considered to be the extinction capital of the world. In the 230 years since European invasion, 29 of its 315 native land mammals have been driven to...
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Happy 81st Thylacine Day: Thylacines were lucky to last as long as they did
81 years ago today – the 7th September 1936 – the last known thylacine died, committing its species, indeed its entire family, to extinction. The last known living thylacine, 1933. (Image in the public...
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Specimen of the Week 318: The newly recapitated bandicoot
This is embarassing. The sheer scale of natural history collections means that some objects are going to be wrongly identified, and the fact that generations of professionals have worked here over...
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Specimen of the Week 330: The taxidermy koala – The language of natural history
With generic terms like mankind and Homo sapiens (“wise man”), people of all genders are well aware that it is the masculine that has dominated the vocabulary of humanity. Not so in the animal kingdom....
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Specimen of the Week 336: The Common Spotted Cuscus Skeleton
Good afternoon to all Specimen of the Week lovers. Before I get started with my inaugural blog I’ll take this opportunity to introduce myself. I’m Chris – museum...
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Specimen of the Week 363: The kangaroo stomach
After nearly a year working at the Grant Museum I realise I have become accustomed to aesthetics of my working environment. Decorations in your typical office might include team photos, prints of...
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