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Leadbeater’s Possum
Leadbeater's possum (''Gymnobelideus leadbeateri'') is a critically endangered possum largely restricted to small pockets of alpine ash, mountain ash, and snow gum forests in the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia, north-east of Melbourne. It is primitive, relict, and non-gliding, and, as the only species in the petaurid genus ''Gymnobelideus'', represents an ancestral form. Formerly, Leadbeater's possums were moderately common within the very small areas they inhabited; their requirement for year-round food supplies and tree-holes to take refuge in during the day restricts them to mixed-age wet sclerophyll forest with a dense mid-story of ''Acacia''. The species was named in 1867 after John Leadbeater, the then taxidermist at the Museum Victoria. They also go by the common name of fairy possum. On 2 March 1971, the State of Victoria made the Leadbeater's possum its faunal emblem. History Leadbeater's possum is thought to have evolved about 20 million years ago. It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick McCoy
Sir Frederick McCoy (1817 – 13 May 1899), was an Irish palaeontologist, zoologist, and museum administrator, active in Australia. He is noted for founding the Botanic Garden of the University of Melbourne in 1856. Early life McCoy was the son of Simon McCoy and was born in Dublin; some sources have his year of birth as 1823, however 1817 is the most likely. He was educated in Dublin and at Cambridge for the medical profession. Palaeontology career McCoy's interests, however, became early centred in natural history and, especially, palaeontology. At the age of eighteen he published a ''Catalogue of Organic Remains compiled from specimens exhibited in the Rotunda at Dublin'' (1841). He assisted Sir RJ Griffith by studying the fossils of the carboniferous and silurian rocks of Ireland, resulting in two publication: ''A Synopsis of the Character of Carboniferous Limestone Fossils of Ireland'' (1844) and ''Synopsis of the Silurian Fossils of Ireland'' (1846). In 1846 Se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
