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Kakarratul
The northern marsupial mole or kakarratul (''Notoryctes caurinus'') is a marsupial in the family Notoryctidae, an endemic animal of arid regions of Central Australia. It lives in the loose sand of dunes and river plains in the desert, spending nearly its entire life beneath ground. The facial features are reduced or absent, their small and strong body, weighing little more the 30 grams (1 ounce), is extremely specialised to moving through sand in search of prey. The species is elusive and it is one of the most poorly understood mammals of Australia. Taxonomy A description of the species was published by Oldfield Thomas in 1920. One of two extant species of the genus '' Notoryctes'', following recognition of its separation from '' Notoryctes typhlops'' in 1988. The specimen described by Thomas was collected in 1910 by a postal official at Wollal, at Ninety Mile Beach in north-western Australia, and this was conveyed to the Western Australian Museum. Thomas distinguished the ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Notoryctidae
Notoryctidae is a family of mammals, allying several extant and fossil species of Australia. The group appear to have diverged from other marsupials at an early stage and are highly specialised to foraging through loose sand; the unusual features have seen the unique family placed in the taxonomic order Notoryctemorphia Aplin & Archer, 1987. The eyes and external ears are absent in the modern species, the nose is shielded and mouth reduced in size, and they use pairs of well developed claws to move beneath the sand. The Australian animals resemble a species known as moles, a burrow building mammal found in other continents, and were collectively referred to as 'marsupial moles'. The regional names for the well known animals, established before their published descriptions, are used to refer to the species. The extant notoryctid species are subterranean, and are extremely well adapted to moving through sand plains and dunes, these are the two species of genus '' Notoryctes'' Stirl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Notoryctes
Marsupial moles, the Notoryctidae , are highly specialized marsupial mammals, known from two species found at the Australian interior. * '' Notoryctes typhlops'' (southern marsupial mole, known as the ''itjaritjari'' by the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people in Central Australia). * '' Notoryctes caurinus'' (northern marsupial mole, also known as the ''kakarratul'') Notoryctids are small, fossorial mammals that anatomically converge on other fossorial (and distantly related) mammals, such as living golden moles (Chrysochloridae) and extinct epoicotheres (Pholidota). Characteristics In an example of convergent evolution, notoryctids resemble (and fill the ecological niche of) moles from North America and Eurasia and golden moles from Southern Africa. Like chrysochlorids and epoicotheres, notoryctids use their forelimbs and enlarged central claws to dig in a parasagittal (i.e., up and down) plane, as opposed to the "lateral scratch" style of digging that characterizes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oldfield Thomas
Michael Rogers Oldfield Thomas (21 February 1858 – 16 June 1929) was a British zoologist. Career Thomas worked at the Natural History Museum on mammals, describing about 2,000 new species and subspecies for the first time. He was appointed to the museum secretary's office in 1876, transferring to the zoological department in 1878. In 1891, Thomas married Mary Kane, daughter of Sir Andrew Clark, heiress to a small fortune, which gave him the finances to hire mammal collectors and present their specimens to the museum. He also did field work himself in Western Europe and South America. His wife shared his interest in natural history, and accompanied him on collecting trips. In 1896, when William Henry Flower took control of the department, he hired Richard Lydekker to rearrange the exhibitions, allowing Thomas to concentrate on these new specimens. Thomas viewed his taxonomy efforts from the scope of British imperialism. "You and I in our scientific lives have seen the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sand Dune
A dune is a landform composed of wind- or water-driven sand. It typically takes the form of a mound, ridge, or hill. An area with dunes is called a dune system or a dune complex. A large dune complex is called a dune field, while broad, flat regions covered with wind-swept sand or dunes with little or no vegetation are called '' ergs'' or ''sand seas''. Dunes occur in different shapes and sizes, but most kinds of dunes are longer on the stoss (upflow) side, where the sand is pushed up the dune, and have a shorter ''slip face'' in the lee side. The valley or trough between dunes is called a ''dune slack''. Dunes are most common in desert environments, where the lack of moisture hinders the growth of vegetation that would otherwise interfere with the development of dunes. However, sand deposits are not restricted to deserts, and dunes are also found along sea shores, along streams in semiarid climates, in areas of glacial outwash, and in other areas where poorly cemented s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Little Sandy Desert
The Little Sandy Desert (LSD) is a desert region in the state of Western Australia, lying to the east of the Pilbara and north of the Gascoyne regions. It is part of the Western Desert cultural region, and was declared an interim Australian bioregion in the 1990s. History Indigenous groups that have identified with the region include the Mandilara, an Aboriginal Australian group who are regarded as the traditional owners of the land. Today the group recognised as traditional owners are the Martu people. The desert is crossed by the Canning Stock Route, an historic stock route created in the early 20th century. Description The Little Sandy Desert covers around and adjoins the Great Sandy Desert (, to the north) and the Gibson Desert (, to the east), all of which lie within the huge Australian Arid Zone which covers the centre of the Australian continent. It lies east of the Pilbara region, and north of Gascoyne, and is part of the Western Desert. To the north the near ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Sandy Desert
The Great Sandy Desert is an interim Australian bioregion,IBRA Version 6.1 data located in the northeast of straddling the Pilbara and southern regions and extending east into the . It is the second largest desert in Australia after the [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gibson Desert
The Gibson Desert is a large desert in Western Australia, largely in an almost "pristine" state. It is about in size, making it the fifth largest desert in Australia, after the Great Victoria, Great Sandy, Tanami and Simpson deserts. The Gibson Desert is both an interim Australian bioregion and desert ecoregion. Location and description The Gibson Desert is located between the saline Kumpupintil Lake and Lake Macdonald along the Tropic of Capricorn, south of the Great Sandy Desert, east of the Little Sandy Desert, and north of the Great Victoria Desert. The altitude rises to just above in places. As noted by early Australian explorers such as Ernest Giles large portions of the desert are characterized by gravel-covered terrains covered in thin desert grasses and it also contains extensive areas of undulating red sand plains and dunefields, low rocky/gravelly ridges and substantial upland portions with a high degree of laterite formation. The sandy soil of the laterit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sympatry
In biology, two related species or populations are considered sympatric when they exist in the same geographic area and thus frequently encounter one another. An initially interbreeding population that splits into two or more distinct species sharing a common range exemplifies sympatric speciation. Such speciation may be a product of reproductive isolation – which prevents hybrid offspring from being viable or able to reproduce, thereby reducing gene flow – that results in genetic divergence. Sympatric speciation may, but need not, arise through secondary contact, which refers to speciation or divergence in allopatry followed by range expansions leading to an area of sympatry. Sympatric species or taxa in secondary contact may or may not interbreed. Types of populations Four main types of population pairs exist in nature. Sympatric populations (or species) contrast with parapatric populations, which contact one another in adjacent but not shared ranges and do n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Triodia (plant)
''Triodia'' is a large genus of hummock-forming bunchgrass endemic to Australia. They are known by the common name spinifex, although they are not a part of the coastal genus '' Spinifex''. Many of the soft-leaved members of this species were formerly included in the genus ''Plectrachne''. It is known as ''tjanpi'' in central Australia, and is used for basket weaving by the women of various Aboriginal Australian peoples. A multiaccess key (SpiKey) is available as a free application for identifying the ''Triodia'' of the Pilbara (28 species and one hybrid). Description ''Triodia'' is a perennial Australian tussock grass that grows in arid regions. Its leaves (30–40 centimetres long) are subulate (awl-shaped, with a tapering point). The leaf tips, that are high in silica, can break off in the skin, leading to infections. Uses Spinifex has traditionally had many uses for Aboriginal Australians. The seeds were collected and ground to make seedcakes. Spinifex resi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acacia
''Acacia'', commonly known as the wattles or acacias, is a large genus of shrubs and trees in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. Initially, it comprised a group of plant species native to Africa and Australasia. The genus name is New Latin, borrowed from the Greek (), a term used by Dioscorides for a preparation extracted from the leaves and fruit pods of '' Vachellia nilotica'', the original type of the genus. In his ''Pinax'' (1623), Gaspard Bauhin mentioned the Greek from Dioscorides as the origin of the Latin name. In the early 2000s it had become evident that the genus as it stood was not monophyletic and that several divergent lineages needed to be placed in separate genera. It turned out that one lineage comprising over 900 species mainly native to Australia, New Guinea, and Indonesia was not closely related to the much smaller group of African lineage that contained ''A. nilotica''—the type species. This meant that the Australasian lineag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eremitalpa Granti Namibensis
Grant's golden mole (''Eremitalpa granti''; colloquially also: ''dune shark'') is a golden mole species. It is the only member of the genus ''Eremitalpa''. Attributes Like all other golden moles, the build of these animals is similar to the moles, though they are not closely related, and are adapted to a life of digging. The front extremities are remodeled to digging claws; in contrast to most other species of its family, they have three claws each. The tail is physically not visible, there are no auricles, the eyes are covered with fur, and the mouth is bearing a leather-like pad, which also serves for digging. Grant's golden moles have long silky fur, which is colored gray on cubs and sandy on older animals. With a length of 7.5 to 9 cm and a weight of 15 to 25 g it is the smallest member of its species. Geographical distribution and habitat Grant's golden mole lives on the western coast of South Africa and in south western Namibia. Its natural habitat is dry areas, mos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
