Blog archive:
AMRI

The Australian Museum has recently acquired two examples of rare mineral species faceted as gemstones, Stibiotanatalite, antimony, tantalum, niobium oxide, and Tantalite-(Mn), manganese, tantalum oxide.

Evaluation of DNA from historical specimens and modern museum samples has enabled an untangling of the complex evolutionary history of four species of rock-wallabies, which are distributed across the Kimberley and Top End.

Citizen science data from the FrogID project helped document the distribution and advertisement call variability in five species of tree frog.

An examination of DNA extracted from tree-kangaroo specimens in the Australian Museum collection has confirmed that the mysterious Dendrolagus deltae, described as a new species from southern New Guinea in 1936, is not a valid species but the result of some erroneous locality information.

The fifth mass bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef in the past eight years was declared in April 2024.

With seven new frog species described to science and over a million frog records at our fingertips, we revise and update the Australian Frog Atlas – the most detailed, up-to-date distribution maps of all Australia’s 254 frog species.

The first new archaeological site excavated on Norfolk Island in almost 30 years expands our knowledge of local Polynesian settlement. Evidence from a recently excavated stone-working site has now been published in the journal Archaeology in Oceania.

Living among the seaweed of our temperate rocky reefs are fishes of the family Clinidae, aptly called Weedfish.

The culmination of a decade-long research study involving scientists from across the globe working on the Bird 10,000 Genomes Project (B10K), which aims to sequence the complete genomes of every living bird species.

The Australian banjo frogs or ‘pobblebonks’ are a spectacular group of four medium to large (3–9 cm) burrowing frog species, recognisable by their distinctive ‘bonk’ and ‘tok’ mating calls (which sound similar to the pluck of a banjo string).

Tim Flannery discusses an exciting mineral, olivine and how it can be used to tackle climate change.

Our new research published in the journal Evolutionary Ecology aimed to unravel the ways male frogs identify other males as territorial threats, the results surprised us.

In October 2023, Justine Charles joined the Marine Invertebrates Department for work experience. This is how she spent her week.

In late August 2023 we sadly farewelled a former colleague, arachnologist Dr Michael Gray, who passed away at the end of July, age 81 years.

A taxonomic assessment of the Brown Tree Frog reveals two additional undescribed species in South Australia, including a species endemic to Kangaroo Island.