Blog archive:
AMRI

A newly discovered trilobite species has been named after Doctor Who actor Tom Baker, by Australian Museum and University of New South Wales scientists, honouring his legacy encouraging young people into careers in STEM.

We have made a big leap in our understanding of how frogs respond to fire, thanks to citizen scientists across Australia!

A recent study of AMRI collections has led to a revision of records from the southwest Pacific and the recognition of a new species.

September 7th, the day the last thylacine died in captivity in 1936, is National Threatened Species Day. Founded to raise awareness of Australia’s plants and animals at risk of extinction, it’s also the occasion of Australia’s Threatened Species Bake-off.

Which of Australia’s endangered species need our most urgent attention? This was the question facing a group of conservation biologists, including two scientists from the Australian Museum Research Institute, following the most recent round of Red Data Book assessments of our reptiles.

When it comes to surveying for rare and threatened frog species, it’s important to be able to identify the tadpoles too!

For this month’s blog, we examine a paper recently published by Loukas Koungoulos and Melanie Fillios in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, in order to answer the question: when did dingoes first come to Australia?

With the help of citizen scientists, a 3 cm-sized threatened Sydney frog has been verified as the 200,000th record for the Australian Museum’s national FrogID project.

Although Leaf-litter Frogs are found throughout the forests of Southeast Asia, only a single individual had been recorded in the Cardamom Mountains. This has now changed, with the scientific discovery of the Cardamom Leaf-Litter Frog, named in honour of Cambodian Herpetologist Thy Neang.

The original description of the now extinct Australian Pig-footed Bandicoot was based on one specimen, since lost, from which the tail was missing. New research, from the Australian Museum and Western Australian Museum, has nominated a replacement…

Climbing high mountains, leaping out of boats, winching out of helicopters … we are prepared to do it all, and more, for endemic snails!

Collected thousands of metres below the ocean surface off the coast of Eastern Australia, two new species of deep-sea worm have been discovered. Learn how an unusual auction helped scientists at the Australian Museum and the University Museum of Bergen name these worms.

Why do some fishes hybridize, while others don’t? A recent collaborative study with the University of Sydney, Australian Museum and University of Queensland, has asked this question of marine angelfishes. They found that hybridisation of these fishes is more widespread than previously thought.

A team of scientists, led by Prof Andy Herries, recently discovered three different hominin species—Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and the earliest-known Homo erectus—lived in the same place at the same time.

Isn’t this the cutest fish you have ever seen? At only 2 mm in length, this larval sunfish is one of three species of Mola found in Australian waters. The question is: which one is it?