Latest Tasmania Stories
DNA from an extinct creature has been resurrected in a live animal for the first time. The genetic material, extracted from the extinct Tasmanian tiger, proved functional in mice. "As more and more species of animals become extinct, we are continuing to lose critical knowledge of gene function and their potential," said researcher Andrew Pask, a molecular biologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Reviving genes from extinct animals can't bring them...
Researchers from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and the University of Texas, USA, have extracted genes from the extinct Tasmanian tiger (thylacine), inserted it into a mouse and observed a biological function "“ this is a world first for the use of the DNA of an extinct species to induce a functional response in another living organism.The results, published in the international scientific journal PLoS ONE this week, showed that the thylacine Col2a1 gene has a similar function in...
Scientists on Long Island are fighting the clock against the extinction of the Tasmanian devil -- a small, sharp-toothed mammal with a bone-chilling shriek -- now dying by the tens of thousands due to a mystifying facial cancer. Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory say the disease, passed animal to animal through bites in which malignant cells are transmitted, raises new questions about cancer itself. Caused neither by viruses nor bacteria, the researchers are trying to decipher...
By ROD McGUIRK CANBERRA, Australia - Scientists are planning to move Tasmanian devils - the Australian marsupial made famous as a snarling, whirlwind character in Warner Bros. cartoons - to an island sanctuary to avert the animals' threatened extinction from a mysterious cancer. But some scientists fear that in their haste to save the species, authorities could wreak further environmental damage and risk the survival of other endangered animals by introducing the devils into a habitat...
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - When an American minister, Darryl R. Peebles, typed his name into an Internet search engine he was surprised to find another Daryl R. Peebles living in the Australian island state of Tasmania. But the surprises kept coming. After the minister contacted the Australian Daryl Peebles and over a series of e-mails the two found they had far more in common that just a name. They were both born in 1949. Both have three children with a child born in 1975 and in 1977....
CANBERRA, Australia -- A mysterious illness that has killed tens of thousands of Tasmanian devils is caused by cancerous tumors that are spread by ferocious squabbling among the carnivorous marsupials, according to research published Thursday.Numbers of the black, fox-sized scavengers with a bloodcurdling growl and powerful jaws that crunch through the bones of much larger animals have plunged in the past decade on Australia's island state of Tasmania, which is their only natural...
LONDON (Reuters) - Tasmanian devils, animals found only in Tasmania, are dying in droves from a facial cancer that scientists said on Wednesday they are spreading to each other through bites. In a report in the journal Nature, the scientists said a genetic analysis of the cancer shows the tumors are identical in each animal they studied. "We propose that the disease is transmitted by ... an infectious cell line passed directly between the animals through bites they inflict on one...
SYDNEY -- The death of about 110 stranded whales in the southern Australian state of Tasmania was probably caused by the animals becoming disoriented in confusing coastal waters, officials said on Thursday.The long-finned pilot whales died after two separate strandings on Tuesday and Wednesday in the Marion Bay area, on the southeastern coast of the island state.Mark Pharaoh, the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service official in charge of the incident, said the most likely reason for the...
A multifaceted research effort by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and their international colleagues from the University of Tasmania and the Australian Antarctic Division, has resulted in several important new findings about Antarctica and the changing dynamics of its ice structure. Scientists have been investigating the mechanisms by which Antarctic icebergs detach from the main continental ice sheet because of the importance of...
SYDNEY (AFP) -- The world's biggest earthquake in almost four years, measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale, was registered off the coast of Australia's southern island state of Tasmania, seismological officials said. It was felt throughout Tasmania, but because it occurred at a depth of 10 kilometres (6.25 miles) and 800 kilometres (500 miles) from inhabited land, it caused no noticeable damage or injury, even to the penguins on the nearby Macquarie Islands. Seismological officials at Geoscience...
Latest Tasmania Reference Libraries
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country involving the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and a number of smaller islands. It’s the world’s sixth-largest country regarding to total area. Some of the neighboring countries include East Timor, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea to the north; the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and Vanuatu to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east. For at least 40,000 years before European...
The Tasmanian Native-hen (Gallinula mortierii) is a flightless rail, one of twelve species of birds common to the Australian island of Tasmania. Other common names include Narkie, Native-hen, and Waterhen. Locally, the bird is often referred to as a 'turbo chook'. This species was originally described in 1840 as Tribonyx mortierii. The name mortierii is in honor of Barthélemy Charles Joseph Dumortier. The Tasmanian Native-hen is a stocky flightless bird, typically between 17 and 20...
The Brown Thornbill (Acanthiza pusilla), is a passerine bird usually found in eastern and south-eastern Australia, including Tasmania. It can grow up to 4 inches long, and feeds on insects. Photo Copyright and Credit
The White-footed Dunnart (Sminthopsis leucopus), is a marsupial that occurs in Tasmania and Australia. It occurs along the coast and in inner Gippsland and Alpine areas up to 1300 feet near Narbethong. The average rainfall of its habitat is between 23 and 40 inches per year. This species requires forest and woodland cover of more than 50% of any square meter of heath understorey or mid-story plant species. Other habitats include coastal tussock grasslands, sedge land and wet heath. This...
The Tasmanian Pademelon (Thylogale billardierii), also known as the Rufous-bellied Pademelon or Red-bellied Pademelon, is the sole endemic species of pademelon found in Tasmania. Due to Tasmania's cooler climate, this pademelon has developed a more full and bushy fur than its northern relatives, who inhabit mainland Australia and Papua New Guinea. Pademelons are solitary and nocturnal, spending the daylight hours in thick vegetation. Rainforest, sclerophyll forest, and scrubland are...
