Latest news with #MuseumsVictoria
The Advertiser
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Advertiser
Primary school students targeted by anti-Semitic chants
A state education minister has offered support to a leading Jewish school after a group of 10 and 11 year-old students was allegedly subjected to anti-Semitic taunts. Melbourne's Mount Scopus Memorial College said a group of grade five children were targeted with intimidating slurs "on the basis of their visible Jewish identity". The school alleged the taunts came from students from a different, unnamed high school during an excursion to Melbourne Museum on Thursday. A man who identified himself as a grandfather of one of the primary students said his granddaughter was left "totally traumatised". "She had no understanding why she was told she was a baby killer, why she was told she was a dirty Jew," the man told Melbourne radio station 3AW. Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Dan Sztrajt said the incident was distressing and is being investigated. "No child should ever be made to feel unsafe or targeted because of their identity or background," he said. Mr Sztrajt did not name the other school allegedly involved but said the other principal had expressed concern. "Mount Scopus Memorial College has offered to work together with the other school to ensure that an appropriate educational to this incident is made available," he said. Melbourne Museum operator Museums Victoria said discrimination had no place in its facilities. "Museums Victoria is deeply sorry that this incident has occurred at one of our venues," it said. Victorian Education Minister and Deputy Premier Ben Carroll said he had spoken to Mr Sztrajt to convey his "disgust" at the attack on the students and offer every support possible. "It is unacceptable that students or staff feel unsafe in the community where they learn, work and play," he said in a statement. Cabinet minister Danny Pearson said he did not believe anti-Semitism had become a "norm" for Jewish Melburnians. "If you look around our city and our state, the overwhelming majority of people are tolerant, respectful," he told reporters on Friday. "They're not racist, they're not bigots." Asked if the state government had done enough to stamp out the behaviour, Mr Pearson noted it passed legislation through parliament in April to strengthen Victoria's anti-vilification laws. The criminal aspect of the changes, which make it easier to prove serious vilification in public, private or online, take effect on September 20. Victoria Police were contacted for comment. A state education minister has offered support to a leading Jewish school after a group of 10 and 11 year-old students was allegedly subjected to anti-Semitic taunts. Melbourne's Mount Scopus Memorial College said a group of grade five children were targeted with intimidating slurs "on the basis of their visible Jewish identity". The school alleged the taunts came from students from a different, unnamed high school during an excursion to Melbourne Museum on Thursday. A man who identified himself as a grandfather of one of the primary students said his granddaughter was left "totally traumatised". "She had no understanding why she was told she was a baby killer, why she was told she was a dirty Jew," the man told Melbourne radio station 3AW. Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Dan Sztrajt said the incident was distressing and is being investigated. "No child should ever be made to feel unsafe or targeted because of their identity or background," he said. Mr Sztrajt did not name the other school allegedly involved but said the other principal had expressed concern. "Mount Scopus Memorial College has offered to work together with the other school to ensure that an appropriate educational to this incident is made available," he said. Melbourne Museum operator Museums Victoria said discrimination had no place in its facilities. "Museums Victoria is deeply sorry that this incident has occurred at one of our venues," it said. Victorian Education Minister and Deputy Premier Ben Carroll said he had spoken to Mr Sztrajt to convey his "disgust" at the attack on the students and offer every support possible. "It is unacceptable that students or staff feel unsafe in the community where they learn, work and play," he said in a statement. Cabinet minister Danny Pearson said he did not believe anti-Semitism had become a "norm" for Jewish Melburnians. "If you look around our city and our state, the overwhelming majority of people are tolerant, respectful," he told reporters on Friday. "They're not racist, they're not bigots." Asked if the state government had done enough to stamp out the behaviour, Mr Pearson noted it passed legislation through parliament in April to strengthen Victoria's anti-vilification laws. The criminal aspect of the changes, which make it easier to prove serious vilification in public, private or online, take effect on September 20. Victoria Police were contacted for comment. A state education minister has offered support to a leading Jewish school after a group of 10 and 11 year-old students was allegedly subjected to anti-Semitic taunts. Melbourne's Mount Scopus Memorial College said a group of grade five children were targeted with intimidating slurs "on the basis of their visible Jewish identity". The school alleged the taunts came from students from a different, unnamed high school during an excursion to Melbourne Museum on Thursday. A man who identified himself as a grandfather of one of the primary students said his granddaughter was left "totally traumatised". "She had no understanding why she was told she was a baby killer, why she was told she was a dirty Jew," the man told Melbourne radio station 3AW. Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Dan Sztrajt said the incident was distressing and is being investigated. "No child should ever be made to feel unsafe or targeted because of their identity or background," he said. Mr Sztrajt did not name the other school allegedly involved but said the other principal had expressed concern. "Mount Scopus Memorial College has offered to work together with the other school to ensure that an appropriate educational to this incident is made available," he said. Melbourne Museum operator Museums Victoria said discrimination had no place in its facilities. "Museums Victoria is deeply sorry that this incident has occurred at one of our venues," it said. Victorian Education Minister and Deputy Premier Ben Carroll said he had spoken to Mr Sztrajt to convey his "disgust" at the attack on the students and offer every support possible. "It is unacceptable that students or staff feel unsafe in the community where they learn, work and play," he said in a statement. Cabinet minister Danny Pearson said he did not believe anti-Semitism had become a "norm" for Jewish Melburnians. "If you look around our city and our state, the overwhelming majority of people are tolerant, respectful," he told reporters on Friday. "They're not racist, they're not bigots." Asked if the state government had done enough to stamp out the behaviour, Mr Pearson noted it passed legislation through parliament in April to strengthen Victoria's anti-vilification laws. The criminal aspect of the changes, which make it easier to prove serious vilification in public, private or online, take effect on September 20. Victoria Police were contacted for comment. A state education minister has offered support to a leading Jewish school after a group of 10 and 11 year-old students was allegedly subjected to anti-Semitic taunts. Melbourne's Mount Scopus Memorial College said a group of grade five children were targeted with intimidating slurs "on the basis of their visible Jewish identity". The school alleged the taunts came from students from a different, unnamed high school during an excursion to Melbourne Museum on Thursday. A man who identified himself as a grandfather of one of the primary students said his granddaughter was left "totally traumatised". "She had no understanding why she was told she was a baby killer, why she was told she was a dirty Jew," the man told Melbourne radio station 3AW. Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Dan Sztrajt said the incident was distressing and is being investigated. "No child should ever be made to feel unsafe or targeted because of their identity or background," he said. Mr Sztrajt did not name the other school allegedly involved but said the other principal had expressed concern. "Mount Scopus Memorial College has offered to work together with the other school to ensure that an appropriate educational to this incident is made available," he said. Melbourne Museum operator Museums Victoria said discrimination had no place in its facilities. "Museums Victoria is deeply sorry that this incident has occurred at one of our venues," it said. Victorian Education Minister and Deputy Premier Ben Carroll said he had spoken to Mr Sztrajt to convey his "disgust" at the attack on the students and offer every support possible. "It is unacceptable that students or staff feel unsafe in the community where they learn, work and play," he said in a statement. Cabinet minister Danny Pearson said he did not believe anti-Semitism had become a "norm" for Jewish Melburnians. "If you look around our city and our state, the overwhelming majority of people are tolerant, respectful," he told reporters on Friday. "They're not racist, they're not bigots." Asked if the state government had done enough to stamp out the behaviour, Mr Pearson noted it passed legislation through parliament in April to strengthen Victoria's anti-vilification laws. The criminal aspect of the changes, which make it easier to prove serious vilification in public, private or online, take effect on September 20. Victoria Police were contacted for comment.
Perth Now
5 days ago
- Politics
- Perth Now
Primary school students targeted by anti-Semitic chants
A state education minister has offered support to a leading Jewish school after a group of 10 and 11 year-old students was allegedly subjected to anti-Semitic taunts. Melbourne's Mount Scopus Memorial College said a group of grade five children were targeted with intimidating slurs "on the basis of their visible Jewish identity". The school alleged the taunts came from students from a different, unnamed high school during an excursion to Melbourne Museum on Thursday. A man who identified himself as a grandfather of one of the primary students said his granddaughter was left "totally traumatised". "She had no understanding why she was told she was a baby killer, why she was told she was a dirty Jew," the man told Melbourne radio station 3AW. Mount Scopus Memorial College principal Dan Sztrajt said the incident was distressing and is being investigated. "No child should ever be made to feel unsafe or targeted because of their identity or background," he said. Mr Sztrajt did not name the other school allegedly involved but said the other principal had expressed concern. "Mount Scopus Memorial College has offered to work together with the other school to ensure that an appropriate educational to this incident is made available," he said. Melbourne Museum operator Museums Victoria said discrimination had no place in its facilities. "Museums Victoria is deeply sorry that this incident has occurred at one of our venues," it said. Victorian Education Minister and Deputy Premier Ben Carroll said he had spoken to Mr Sztrajt to convey his "disgust" at the attack on the students and offer every support possible. "It is unacceptable that students or staff feel unsafe in the community where they learn, work and play," he said in a statement. Cabinet minister Danny Pearson said he did not believe anti-Semitism had become a "norm" for Jewish Melburnians. "If you look around our city and our state, the overwhelming majority of people are tolerant, respectful," he told reporters on Friday. "They're not racist, they're not bigots." Asked if the state government had done enough to stamp out the behaviour, Mr Pearson noted it passed legislation through parliament in April to strengthen Victoria's anti-vilification laws. The criminal aspect of the changes, which make it easier to prove serious vilification in public, private or online, take effect on September 20. Victoria Police were contacted for comment.
Time of India
6 days ago
- Science
- Time of India
Are Monitor lizards modern dinosaurs? Scientists discover they share a hidden bone structure with the extinct species!
The past often hides clues about the present, especially when it comes to evolution. And sometimes, the most surprising discoveries don't come from deep expeditions into the wild, but from the hidden fossils or preserved museum archives. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Using technological advances like micro-CT scanning, researchers can now revisit old specimens and find out secrets hidden beneath the surface, without damaging the samples. These breakthroughs allow us to find connections across time, between the creatures that walked the earth millions of years ago to animals still living today. One among these is an area of recent study involving osteoderms, which are small bony plates located under the skin. While this is commonly associated with dinosaurs, armadillos, and crocodiles, new research shows they may be much more widespread in today's reptiles than anyone previously thought. Monitor Lizards share an ancient bone structure with Dinosaurs Scientists have found that monitor lizards, known as goannas in Australia, have hidden bone structures called osteoderms beneath their skin. Surprisingly, it is a feature they share with prehistoric creatures like the Stegosaurus. This research, published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, represents the first large-scale study of osteoderms in lizards and snakes. The team scanned over 2,000 reptile specimens using high-resolution micro-computed tomography (micro-CT), according to Museums Victoria. 'We were astonished to find osteoderms in 29 Australo-Papuan monitor lizard species that had never been documented before,' said Roy Ebel, lead author of the study and researcher at Museums Victoria Research Institute and the Australian National University. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now 'It's a fivefold increase in known cases among goannas,' he added in a press release. What are Osteoderms Osteoderms are well-known bone structures in animals like armadillos, crocodiles, and dinosaurs, including the iconic Stegosaurus. Their purpose isn't completely understood, but researchers believe they provide protection, help regulate body temperature, store calcium, and may even support movement. Jane Melville, Senior Curator of Terrestrial Vertebrates at Museums Victoria Research Institute, explained the bigger picture, 'What's so exciting about this finding is that it reshapes what we thought we knew about reptile evolution. It suggests that these skin bones may have evolved in response to environmental pressures as lizards adapted to Australia's challenging landscapes.' The researchers also talked about the vital role of museum archives in this discovery. Some of the studied specimens were over 120 years old. By using the non-destructive micro-CT scanning, these preserved reptiles could be examined in detail for the first time. The study reveals that more than half of all lizard species may have osteoderms, about 85% more than previously thought. With this growing dataset, researchers are now poised to look for even more secrets hiding in plain sight, bridging the gap between ancient dinosaurs and the reptiles we see today.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Science
- The Guardian
Ancient ‘alien' brittle stars linked to relatives across the globe by a deep-sea evolutionary superhighway
A global study of deep sea creatures called brittle stars has linked ecosystems on a 'superhighway' reaching from southern Australia to the north Atlantic, uncovering close evolutionary ties across oceans. Researchers analysed DNA from 2,699 brittle star specimens collected from all of the Earth's oceans – from the equator to the poles, and the intertidal zone to the abyss (more than 3,500 metres deep) – and housed in 48 museums across the globe. The unique dataset revealed connections stretching tens of thousands of kilometres, such as 17 species of brittle stars from Tasmania that have close relatives near Iceland, in the North Atlantic. 'You might think of the deep sea as remote and isolated, but for many animals on the seafloor, it's actually a connected superhighway,' said Dr Tim O'Hara, senior curator of marine invertebrates at Museums Victoria Research Institute and lead author of the study published in Nature. Sign up: AU Breaking News email Like sea stars, brittle stars live on the ocean floor. These ancient, spiny animals vary in colour and size, with some only a few millimetres wide, and others with metre-long arms. 'They're slightly alien,' said O'Hara. 'They don't have a brain, they don't have eyes. They just have a round disc, with a stomach and things like reproductive organs, and five arms.' The analysis found that over millions of years and without the help of fins or wings, brittle stars have quietly migrated across entire oceans. 'We fly over the oceans now, and the Earth doesn't seem too big to us,' he said. 'But really, it is huge.' How can such closely related species be found on opposite sides of the planet? The logical answer was the ability of brittle star larvae to drift on ocean currents in suspended animation, even for up to a year, O'Hara said. The study also revealed connections based on depth, with similarities between brittle stars living 500m deep off Antarctica and others at 500m off Australia, almost like 'horizontal highways of life through the ocean', O'Hara said. The scale of the dataset also offered bigger picture insights into the workings of the deep sea – which covers 50% of the planet – beyond the individual threads illuminated by ocean expeditions. Scientists had suspected the deep sea to be more connected than shallow water systems, said Dr Nerida Wilson, a research scientist specialising in marine invertebrates, and a molecular biologist at the CSIRO who was not involved in the research. 'This study has confirmed that in a very robust way, by such comprehensive sampling.' Wilson said it also demonstrated the value of museum collections, which 'house not only specimens, but all the information that's locked inside their DNA that can provide insights into times long past.' Dr Sue-Ann Watson, an associate professor in marine biology at James Cook University, who was also not involved in the research, agreed. Natural history collections provide time capsules of past life on earth, which allow researchers to understand links 'across vast oceans, even in hard-to-reach places', Watson said. 'As scientists begin to unlock new knowledge from collections, this research highlights that it is critically important to continue to collect new biological specimens on a global scale as rapid environmental change, including climate change, continues.' In O'Hara's view, the study also highlighted the fragility of deep-sea life, which has high extinctions as well as dispersal, and its dependence on the presence of ice at the poles. 'If there's no ice in Antarctica, in the Arctic, then there's no sinking of cold, oxygenated water down into the deep sea. 'If we don't have ice at the poles, then we won't have a deep-sea circulation. And if we don't have deep-sea circulation, we'll have a dead ecosystem over half a planet.'
ABC News
11-07-2025
- Science
- ABC News
Unlocking secrets deep inside the world's most precious specimens
It was a coup, years in the making. After lengthy negotiations, the custodians of the 13 youngest preserved Tasmanian tigers in existence had all agreed for their specimens to be studied by a team of scientists in Melbourne. Nine from museums across Australia and four from Charles University in Prague, which had been in the institution's zoology department for more than a century but had only recently been rediscovered. It was incredibly rare for these preserved creatures to leave their museums. The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery placed such high value on their decades-old specimens, it had a curator personally escort them by plane across the Bass Strait. Convincing the museums to release the Tasmanian tigers relied, in no small part, on the novel way the researchers promised to analyse them. Two of the three Tasmanian tiger joeys held in the Museums Victoria collection. ( ABC News: Margaret Burin ) Instead of the age-old method of slicing the creatures open to reveal their internal structure and ultimately destroying the specimen, they would be examined using a process known as computed tomography scanning, or CT scanning for short. A staple of the medical profession since the late 70s for diagnosing disease and injury, the X-ray technology is now being increasingly used in museums and universities to look inside the creatures and objects filling their collections. For example, researchers have scanned tiny meteorites to look back deep in time for ancient minerals from the formation of the solar system, while others are using the technology to better understand the future and predict how a changing climate will impact animal habitats. In the case of the Tasmanian tiger, it provided an incredibly detailed — and unexpected — view inside the tiny creatures' skin, through to its skeleton and organs inside. This is specimen A930 from the Tasmanian museum. The nine-week-old, male Tasmanian tiger joey, measures around 20 centimetres. From the exterior, you can see his developing claws and footpads. The species' distinctive stripes have not yet developed. But it's underneath the skin, where the power of the CT scan shines. Using a process known as segmentation, researcher Axel Newton was able to identify the tiger's vital organs including its heart, lungs and brain. Even more intricate features like the windpipe and the bronchiole — a tiny web of air tubes inside the lungs — are visible. The detail in the skeleton allows for precise measurements. The scans showed the young thylacines at five different stages of their early development, giving the team of scientists, and the world, a never-before-seen blueprint how a baby Tasmanian tiger would have matured inside its mother's pouch. So clear, in fact, were the scans that the team noticed something peculiar. Two of the specimens (one is highlighted here), which looked almost identical to the other on the outside, were not Tasmanian tigers. One giveaway, identified in the scans, was that the skeletons had a pair of bones in the pelvis not found in the Tasmanian tiger. The scientists determined they were likely to be quolls or Tasmanian devils. The discovery reduced the total number of known pouch young Tasmanian tigers in existence from 13 to 11 and wiped millions of dollars off the value of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery's collection. But for professor Andrew Pask, an epigeneticist from the University of Melbourne and one of the team members involved in the 2018 project, it highlighted just how powerful CT scanning could be. "It was absolutely magical, to be able to really peel back and start to have a look at all of that incredible data that you can see when you can pick out every single tiny little facet of bone," he said. On a video call to discuss the research, Professor Pask began by showing off some of his other work: side-by-side CT scans of embryonic mouse penises. He is investigating the effects of microplastics and chemicals on male infertility. Despite being minuscule, the scans reveal stark differences in the test subjects on display. Before delving too deep into what this could mean for the human race, the conversation hook turns onto another of his projects — bringing the thylacine back from extinction. He's using CT for that too. The latest use case was scanning the teeth of a specimen to pinpoint the exact location of its root so they could drill a microscopic hole into it to extract DNA. The results were so good, Professor Pask said, the museum has already offered to get him more teeth. One reason why museums are warming to the idea of having their collections, even the most prized items, blasted with X-rays is that they often receive an extremely high-resolution, three-dimensional copy in return. Researchers can access them whenever they please and the museums can also use them for educational purposes. The models can be 3D printed and put on display for the public to see and touch and connect with an extinct Australian marsupial. "It's just this incredibly valuable resource that will live on forever," said Professor Pask who at one point reached across his desk and pulled into view his very own 3D printed Tasmanian tiger. "I've got a box of them," he said. How it works CT scanners work by capturing X-ray images of an object. But instead of stopping at just one image, like you would to see a broken bone inside a body, they capture hundreds or sometimes thousands of images of an object from all different angles. The X-rays can then be fed into an algorithm that assembles them into a three-dimensional, digital model — innards and all. On the fourth floor of the geography, earth and atmospheric sciences wing at the University of Melbourne, deep in a rabbit warren of white walls and fluorescent lights is a small, nondescript laboratory. If it weren't for the various radiation warnings, it could be any one of the other hundreds of rooms in the building. But inside, flanked by an array of high-powered computers and monitors, is a million-dollar micro-CT scanner. Unlike CT scanners in hospitals, which can image an entire human body albeit at a relatively low-resolution, the micro versions are designed to scan objects as small as 1 millimetre in diameter and can distinguish features smaller than a single red blood cell. In a regular CT scan in hospital theX-ray emitting tube slowly moves around the human inside. In a micro version, the specimens sit on a spindle and are rotated a fraction of a degree while the x-ray tube stays put. Dr Black says he has used this micro-CT scanner to help in 30 different fields of scientific study. ( ABC News: Margaret Burin ) Scientist and CT specialist Dr Jay Black is the machine's operator. He is a "superstar" of micro-CT scanning, according to a number of his colleagues interviewed by the ABC. As a result, Dr Black is a man in demand. He estimates he's worked across 30 different research fields. He has teamed up with researchers to study minuscule spider brains to understand how they're being affected by urban light. He has scanned samples from mysterious stone jars believed to be burial sites in Laos to help date and understand where the material came from. And, he also worked on the Tasmanian tiger joeys. On the day the ABC visited, the scanner was loaded with a small, clear tube housing a marble-sized meteorite. Researchers have used CT scanning to help identify areas inside space rocks like the one on display that could contain ancient solids known as calcium-aluminium rich inclusions — the oldest material ever identified. A small meteorite is loaded into the micro-CT scanner at the University of Melbourne. ( ABC News: Margaret Burin ) "It's amazing, almost every week I have people contacting me from new research fields," Dr Black said. Researchers are increasingly turning to specialists like Dr Black because of the extreme detail he can get in the scans. The machine in his lab can capture images at a resolution of 1 micron or 0.001 millimetre. That level of detail has been a game changer for Dr Jane Melville, a taxonomist and evolutionary biologist who worked with Dr Black to map minute differences between Australian lizard species. In 2019, Dr Melville and her team used micro-CT scans to analyse the skulls of vulnerable grassland earless dragons. Including this one that was found in a man's freezer in Bathurst, New South Wales. To the eye, the differences between tiny lizard skills are largely indistinguishable. But by combining these extremely high-resolution 3D measurements with genetic analysis, Dr Melville was able to detect distinct differences. Prior to their research, these specimens were all classified as the same species. In their final paper, Dr Melville's team found they were, in fact, four distinct species of earless dragons. This discovery that has aided conservation efforts of the grass-dwelling lizard, which has been hit particularly hard by urban expansion. In 2023, the critically endangered Victorian grassland earless dragon was spotted for the first time in half a century. Without CT scanning, measuring the differences between the lizards with such precision would have been near impossible. "The old style is you get a museum specimen and some calipers and you measure head length and head width and things," Dr Melville said. "But with CT scans you can do that much more accurately, you can do it on the bones and you can do it without damaging these precious museum specimens." Dr Jane Melville studies a preserved earless dragon. ( ABC News: Margaret Burin ) A preserved earless dragon lizard specimen from the Museums Victoria collection is examined under light. ( ABC News: Margaret Burin ) At 11am on a Thursday, the grand foyer of the Melbourne Museum is already jammed packed with preschoolers bouncing from toe to toe as they prepare to meet their fossilised dinosaur idols. Just beyond the fervour, and down a lift is one of the engine rooms of the whole operation — the wet collection store. Here, rows and rows of lizards, snakes, fish and miscellaneous critters, float preserved in jars of ethanol. Two of the three Tasmanian tiger joeys in the Museums Victoria collection are here. There's even a shark or two inside giant skip bins at the entrance. Dr Melville looking through the wet specimen collection at Museums Victoria. ( ABC News: Margaret Burin ) When scientists, like Dr Melville, want to study a specimen they come here. But technology is changing that. Museum collections are, by design, open to all researchers to access to conduct research. But there can be challenges gaining access at times. Researchers can apply to visit the museum to study items in the collection, but travel can be costly. Specimens can be posted in the mail, but museums may be reluctant to do that for rare and delicate items. If a researcher needs to see inside a creature, that can be another road block because of the irreparable damage it would cause. Hundreds of taxidermy animals fill the mounted collection at Museums Victoria in Carlton. ( ABC News: Margaret Burin ) But if a specimen is scanned in 3D, it can be placed online and shared with the entire world, removing almost all barriers to access. Dr Christy Hipsley, another member of the Tasmanian tiger research team who has also worked with Dr Melville, started using micro-CT scanning more than a decade ago while working at Berlin's Museum of Natural History. She sees CT as a way of democratising access to the hundreds of millions of specimens stored in the world's museum collections — that together tell the story of life on Earth. "The idea and the goal is to have a single standardised repository (for CT scanned data) like we have for DNA," Dr Hipsley said referencing GenBank — a publicly accessible database of the world's DNA and genetic sequences. In 2024, a collection of natural history museums in the United States joined together to scan and publish 13,000 vertebrate specimens from their collections including snakes, frogs, lizards and even a whale. The humpback specimen was so large it had to be meticulously disassembled and scanned bone by bone before being pieced back together. But having so much data presents its own problem: how to get meaningful insights from a lifetime of information, when the file size for a single scan can stretch into the gigabytes. Dr Jane Melville is currently looking at this very problem. She's involved in a project that's looking to use machine learning to analyse, sort and measure hundreds and thousands of tiny fossils collected from the base of caves across South Australia, Victoria and Queensland. Dr Melville is hoping the project could help scientists understand how changing environments have impacted creatures, so that they can make better predictions about how climate change will affect them in the future. "At the moment I think when governments are conserving land for species it's a very static thing. They're thinking, 'oh they're here now, that means they'll always need to be here'." she said. "But if the climate's changing species actually change their distributions, they move. And so I think we need to have a more dynamic outlook on conserving environments and land for species because under climate scenarios in the future, it's going to change." Notes about this story: The CT scan data for the Tasmanian tiger research is publicly available. It can be found in the research paper, Letting the 'cat' out of the bag: pouch young development of the extinct Tasmanian tiger revealed by x-ray computed tomography. The segmented organs were supplied by Dr Jay Black from the Melbourne Trace Analysis for Chemical, Earth and Environmental Sciences (TrACEES) Platform, courtesy of Axel Newton. Dr Jane Melville supplied the 3D mesh files for the earless dragon. The data from the US Natural History museums is publicly available in the The oVert Thematic Collections Network on the Morphosource website . Posted 14m ago 14 minutes ago Fri 11 Jul 2025 at 7:00pm
