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THE WINSTON CHURCHILL MEMORIAL TRUST OF
AUSTRALIA
Report by – KENNY TRAVOUILLON – 2016 Churchill Fellow
To document the diversity of bandicoots and bilbies through time
and space
I understand that the Churchill Trust may publish this Report, either in hard copy or on the
internet or both, and consent to such publication.
I Indemnify the Churchill Trust against any loss, costs or damages it may suffer arising out of
any claim or proceedings made against the Trust in respect of or arising out of the
publication of any Report submitted to the Trust and which the Trust places on a website for
access over the internet.
I also warrant that my Final Report is original and does not infringe the copyright of any
person, or contain anything which is, or the incorporation of which into the Final Report is,
actionable for defamation, a breach of any privacy law or obligation, breach of confidence,
contempt of court, passing-off or contravention of any other private right or of any law.
Signed Dated 27/07/2017
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INDEX INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................ 3
Acknowledgements...................................................................................................... 3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY............................................................................................................. 4
Personal Details............................................................................................................ 4
Project Description....................................................................................................... 4
Major lessons, conclusions and dissemination of information.................................... 4
PROGRAMME........................................................................................................................... 5
MAIN BODY.............................................................................................................................. 6
Background.................................................................................................................. 6
Modern taxonomy........................................................................................................ 6
Fossil record................................................................................................................. 7
Methodology................................................................................................................ 8
NHM London…..………………........................................................................................... 9
MNHN Paris…..............................................................................................................11
MSN Genoa….............................................................................................................. 12
ZSM Munich …………………………………........................................................................... 12
AMNH New York………………………………………………………………….................................... 14
Smithsonian Washington DC...................................................................................... 15
EWU Cheney..…………………………………………………………................................................. 15
UCMP Berkeley........................................................................................................... 16
Museum Study………………………………………………………………………………………………………..17
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS............................................................................ 18
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INTRODUCTION
Australian mammals are under crisis. Many species are currently listed as critically endangered to vulnerable, and over 30 species have gone extinct since the arrival of Europeans in Australia. Bandicoots and bilbies are one of the groups of Australian mammals that have suffered the most. They have also received very limited taxonomic research interest in the past few decades, probably as a result of the urgencies in focusing on their conservation.
Museum collections provide a unique opportunity in documenting the species that have been lost. European and American collections hold specimens dating from the 1800s to the early 1900s, as well as fossil specimens which may represent species yet unknown. They can help document past distribution of species as well as document their evolutionary history.
Before new species can be identified, it is important to first understand how known species differ, by examining type specimens, which are the specimens used to name and identify species. The vast majority of the Australian mammal type specimens are not in Australia, making it harder to undertake proper taxonomic projects. The Churchill Fellowship is unique in being to help undertake such project, which aims to bring back knowledge from overseas to Australia.
Acknowledgements
First, I’d like to thank the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust for providing me the
opportunity to undertake this project and travel around the world to achieve this goal. I also
would like to thank the sponsor of my Churchill Fellowship, the Australian Biological
Resources Study (ABRS) for providing the ideal avenue to undertake taxonomic projects. I’d
like to thank the WA Museum for letting me undertake this project and supporting me
throughout the journey.
I’d like to thank Roberto Portela Miguez and Pip Brewer at the NHM in London, for allowing
me to work in the collections, and giving me a tour. Many thanks to Géraldine Véron, Cécile
Callou and Aurélie Verguin at the MNHN in Paris, for access to the collection and for
agreeing to get the Pig-footed Bandicoot skull prepared so I can identify it. Many thanks to
Giuliano Doria at the MSN in Genoa, for collection access and getting that exhibition pulled
down so the specimen I wanted to see could be accessed. Thank you to Anneke H. van
Heteren and Martin Baehr for collection access, a lovely lunch and making sure the holotype
of P. myosuros is safe for the future. I’d like to thank Eileen Westwig and Eleanor Hoeger for
getting me access to the AMNH collection and getting the types out. Many thanks to Darrin
Lunde at the Smithsonian for the paper, pens and collection access. Many thanks to Judd
Case for allowing me to collaborate on the Etadunna and Wipajiri Formation bandicoots,
bilbies and dasyurids. I’d like to thank Mark Goodwin, Bill Clemens and Pat Holroyd, for
access to the collections at the UCMP, and helping to find out where some of the specimen
could be. And finally, I’d like to thank family and friends that met up with us in the evenings
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and week-ends, keeping us fed and entertained. It was great to have my grandmother finally
see her great grandchildren!
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Personal Details Dr Kenny Travouillon Curator of Mammalogy Western Australian Museum 49 Kew Street Welshpool WA 6106 (08) 9212 3729 [email protected]
Project Description The project has two main objectives: 1) to visit museum collections to examine type specimens and additional specimens of bandicoot and bilbies around Europe and USA where they are held, and 2) visit the fossil collections in the USA, to identify new species. Both objectives will result in the discovery and description of new species and a better understanding of diversity and evolution of bandicoots and bilbies in Australia. The scientific work undertaken will be published in peer-reviewed journals, and with media announcements through the Western Australian Museum. This work will be very important for the conservation of species.
Major lessons, conclusions and dissemination of information Having examined all type specimens and rediscoveries old species currently not recognised has been vastly beneficial in being able to identify new species in museum collections. The main lesson learned is that not all species of bandicoots and bilbies that exist or existed have been discovered, and a lot more work still remains in order to really understand the diversity of this group.
This project will result in the description of several new species, and also provide information about the past distribution of many species. This will help make more informed decision in conservation, to re-introduce critically endangered species to areas that the species used to occupy and therefore more likely to survive.
I have already presented a summary of my Churchill Fellowship at the NHM in London, MNHN in Paris and the ZSM in Munich. I have presented some of the results at the International Mammal Congress in Perth in July this year, and plan to present the palaeontological results at the Australian Palaeontology conference in October. I will be presenting the results also at the WA Museum which will be attended by the New Museum team, and potentially have some of the results being presented in the gallery. I will be published the results in scientific journal and getting media involved when the research is published.
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PROGRAMME Dates Location
Contacts
3/04/17-13/04/17
Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom
Roberto Portela Miguez [email protected] Dr Pip Brewer [email protected]
17/04/17-21/04/17
Musée Nationale d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France
Prof. Géraldine Véron [email protected] Cécile Callou [email protected]
26/04/17 Museo di Storia Naturale, Genoa, Italy
Dr Giuliano Doria [email protected]
28/04/17 Zoologische Staatssammlung Munchen, Munich, Germany
Dr Anneke H. van Heteren [email protected]
8/05/17-10/05/17 American Natural History Museum, New York, USA
Eileen Westwig [email protected] Eleanor Hoeger [email protected]
12/05/17
Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, USA
Darrin Lunde [email protected]
15/05/17-19/05/17
Eastern Washington University, Cheney, USA
Dr Judd Case [email protected]
22/05/17-25/05/17 Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Dr Mark Goodwin [email protected] Pat Holroyd [email protected]
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MAIN BODY Background Bandicoots and bilbies are small marsupials, part of the order Peramelemorphia, native to Australia, New Guinea, and surrounding islands (Figures 1-2). There are currently 2 species of bilby (endemic to Australia) and 21 species of bandicoot recognised (9 Australian endemic, 12 New Guinean endemic). Since European colonisation, bandicoots and bilbies are one of the three major groups of mammals (the other being rodents and kangaroos) that have suffered a number of extinction due to the introduction of feral species (e.g. cats and foxes), change in fire regime, and expansion of agriculture.
As a result, three species in this group went extinct between 1940 and 1960, and most if not all species have suffered major retraction in their distribution, some only surviving on islands (completely extinct on mainland Australia). As a result, the likelihood of finding a new species of bandicoot or bilby in the wild today in Australia is almost zero.
Modern taxonomy Museum collections provide a chance for new discoveries. When Europeans first arrived in Australia, they collected many specimens which they sent back to European museums to study. As a result, the vast majority of Australian mammal species were named and described from specimens housed in European museums. These are called ‘type’ specimens, with the holotype being the main specimen used to name a species, and any other specimens being the paratypes (Figure 3). The new species descriptions were usually published in journals or even newspapers, to disseminate the discovery of the new species. In the 1800s, it was quite common for researchers from two different institutions working on specimens from the same species at different museums, published this same species under different names in journals in different language. This created a lot of confusion and
Figure 1 The Greater Bilby (NHM, London).
Figure 2 A bandicoot from the South West of Western Australia (WAM, Perth).
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as a result, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) was created in 1895, to provide guidelines and police taxonomic names used.
The number of species of bandicoots and bilbies described in the 1800s and early 1900s is a lot higher than the currently accepted 23 species. Some were shown to be synonyms (the same species named multiple times), some were distinct but not distinct enough to be full species, so they were considered subspecies, most of which are still recognised today as subspecies. With new technologies and the rise of genetics, some of the old subspecies have been re-elevated to full species (e.g. the Cape York Brown Bandicoot, Isoodon peninsulae, previously a subspecies of the Southern Brown Bandicoot, Isoodon obesulus), as they were shown to be genetically distinct. Discoveries of new Australian bandicoots and bilbies may come from museum collections, from specimens collected early on in the 1800s and early
1900s. Re-examination of the type specimens in Europe may also help sort some of the taxonomic issues, as well as provide the basic understanding on
how to separate species based on the morphology of the known species. Tissues sampled from type specimens can also provide genetic data to help separate species, and discover new species in museum collections.
Fossil record The first Europeans who visited Australia didn’t just collect modern mammals. They also collected a wide variety of species across the whole animal kingdom, plants, and even fossils. The Natural History Museum in London has the first fossil mammal species ever discovered, including the largest marsupial that ever existed, Diprotodon optatum, and many species known today as the ‘megafauna’ of Australia. Most of Australian fossils in European museums are from the time of the ‘megafauna’, also known as the Quaternary Period (Figure 4). In the 1960s, American museums started to have an interest in the Australian fossil record, to document how marsupials evolved in Australia. As a result, they targeted fossil sites from various age, some as old
Figure 3 Type specimens of bandicoots at the NHM, London.
Figure 4 Skull of the extinct Marsupial Lion, Thylacoleo carnifex, NHM, London.
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as 26 million years old. The fossil record of bandicoot and bilbies is fairly poor compared to the ‘megafauna’ which has been well documented. This is most likely the result of collection bias, with people preferring to collect large animals over small animals, which are often more fragmented due to their small size and fragility. The bulk of what we known about the early evolution of bandicoots and bilbies come from the Riversleigh World Heritage Area, which has yielded beautifully preserved skulls, a rare occurrence for small mammals. As a result of the discovery of specimens from Riversleigh, we now know that bandicoots and bilbies were very diverse around 18 million years ago, and occupied a wide variety of niches. It also makes it much easier now to work on more fragmentary specimens, like those recovered in the 1960s from Central Australia, which are some of the oldest specimens of bandicoot and bilbies ever recovered. Those specimens are still housed in Universities and Museums in the USA.
Methodology The methods of this project are fairly simple, and were repeated in each museum and university that was visited during the Churchill Fellowship trip. Type specimens of bandicoots and bilbies from Australia were examined first. Then, given the limited amount of time, rarer specimens were examined, especially those from locality which they are now extinct from, followed by more common specimens. Bandicoots and bilbies from New Guinea were also examined when time permitted. As part of the examination process, specimens were measured and photographed. Measurements included ear, leg and tail on skins, 35 measurements on skulls (Figure 5) and 32 measurements on teeth. Specimens where photographed to show all sides of the specimens, for skins and skulls. Measurements are then analysed using a statistical program, which helps visualise
how species differ from one another based on their skull and tooth shape. Tissues were collected from type specimens in order to match the genetic data to the morphology of the animal. A piece of skin (with fur) was cut off from the belly, and placed in a vial, to be sent back to Australia (Figure 6).
Figure 5 Skull measurements taken on each specimen.
Figure 6 One of the bilby type specimen being sampled for DNA analysis at the NHM, London.
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The tissues will be sequenced by the OZ Mammal Genomics (OMG) Project, which aims to document the genetic diversity of all mammals in Australia, and identify how they are related to one another.
NHM London
Australia being an old British colony, the vast majority of the type specimens ended up at the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London. As a result, it made sense to start the journey there before venturing anywhere else. It also houses one of the largest collections of bandicoots and bilbies outside of Australia, and so the largest portion of the trip was spent there (2 weeks). On the way to the NHM, I ran into Winston Churchill in the London tube (Figure 7). It was a poster advertising an upcoming exhibit which unfortunately I didn’t get to see.
On arrival at the NHM, I was notified that I couldn’t go into the mammal collections because the curator, Roberto, had not arrived yet. Luckily, I know the Fossil Mammal curator quite well, Pip Brewer, having done our PhD in Sydney. Pip gave me a tour of the Palaeontology collection while waiting for Roberto to arrive. I got to see some of the most iconic fossils from around the world, though I think I love the Australian Megafauna like Diprotodon and Thylacoleo (Figure 4) the most. She also showed me the fossil bandicoots and bilbies that were collected early on from Wellington Caves and some exchanged specimens from the Nullarbor. At that point, I decided that every evening, after working all day in the mammal collection, I would come back to the palaeontology collection and work on those specimens from Wellington Caves and the Nullarbor.
Roberto arrived and gave me an induction and a tour of the mammal before getting started. We had been collaborating over emails, with Pip, and his colleague Bruno, on the Pig-footed Bandicoot, Chaeropus ecaudatus, which went extinct in the 1940s (Figure 8). We discovered that there was in fact 2 species; the northern species has yet to be named and described. I started working on those first, and checked measurements taken originally by Pip, and examine features that I had seen in specimens in Australia.
Figure 7 Meeting Winston Churchill in the London tube.
Figure 8 Specimens of Pig-footed bandicoots, Chaeropus ecaudatus.
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Once I was done with Chaeropus, I moved on to other bandicoots (Perameles, Isoodon) and the bilbies (Macrotis, Figure 9). Going through the types, I was able to confirm some conclusions I made from looking at specimens in collections in Australia. The number of species we currently have in Australia is much lower than used to occur, and as a result, the extinctions that occurred in the last 200 years are much worse than previously thought. One of the highlights of going through the NHM collection is that someone in the early 1900s had separated several bandicoots from the Nullarbor region, and left a note that they were a new species. It is the same species I had identified in collections at the Western Australian Museum, which I was in the process of naming. Unfortunately, this new species is already extinct, and probably got wiped out by foxes in the 1940s. I managed to have enough time to look at the New Guinean bandicoots in the collections too (Peroryctes, Microperoryctes, Echymipera, Rhynchomeles) and noticed that they are likely to represent many more species than what we currently know. I also measured and photographed some Northern Quoll specimens for my colleague Linette Umbrello’s PhD project, and went over to the Herpetology department to measure and photograph several types of snakes and lizards for my WAM colleagues Paul Doughty (past Churchill Fellow) and Ryan Ellis. On the second week at the NHM, I gave a talk about my Churchill Fellowship project. The NHM librarian came to talk to me after the talk, and asked if I would be interested to see the original artwork that John Gould drew for the Pig-footed Bandicoot. It was very special to be able to see it. Gould was the first to really understand how the animal actually moved on land. Earlier artworks or taxidermy had the Pig-footed Bandicoot sitting on its back legs like a kangaroo, which in reality it wouldn’t be able to do.
Figure 9 A rare mounted specimen of the extinct Lesser Bilby, Macrotis leucura.
Figure 10 The original artwork drawn by John Gould of the Pig-footed Bandicoot.
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MNHN Paris
On arrival in Paris at the Musée Nationale d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN), I was welcomed by Géraldine Véron. She first took me to the general collections which she was in charge of. The bandicoot and bilby collection being a lot smaller at the MNHN than that of the NHM, I was able to measure and examine every single specimen. The collections at the MNHN are arranged very differently to that of the NHM. At the NHM, type specimens and general specimens
are stored together, but at the MNHN, type specimens are handled by a different department. So the following day, I had a meeting with Cécile Callou, who then gave me access to the type specimens, thanks to the help of her assistant Aurélie Verguin. It was interesting to see that the type specimens at the MNHN were mounted specimens (taxidermy), while the type specimens at the NHM in London were all study skins (not designed to be displayed to the public). It was sad to see that the only thing left of the type of the Western Barred-bandicoot, Perameles bougainville, was bits and pieces of a skull. Though, seeing that specimen and measuring it was able to confirm that the species now occurring only on off-shore islands did occur on the Australian mainland. Another gem in the collection, which was on display in the main gallery, was the mounted specimen of the Pig-footed bandicoot (Figure 13). Géraldine was amazing in getting me access to the specimen despite the general public being around and wondering what we were doing to the specimen, or wondering if they should call security for leaving my bag unattended in the gallery. I wasn’t able to determine which species of Pig-footed Bandicoot the specimen was, but the skull, which is currently wired shut, might be able to provide this information, and Cécile Callou is working on getting the skull cleaned up and photographed so I can identify the species.
Figure 11 The Musée Nationale d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France.
Figure 12 Type specimens of various marsupials in the MNHN collection.
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I also visited the Herpetology collection on one day to photograph and measure a skink type for my colleague Paul Doughty. I didn’t give a talk that week, but I did come back to Paris after Munich and gave a talk then, which was well received.
MSN Genoa
The next stop was in Italy, at the Museo di Storia Naturale (Genoa). I was welcomed by the director of the museum, Giuliano Doria. Here again, the collection was small, so I was able to look at every single specimen. The principle specimen I came to see in this museum was the mount of the Western Barred-bandicoot, which is used as the icon for the species on Wikipedia (Figure 14). Unfortunately, a temporary exhibit was happening at the time, and was completely blocking access to that specimen. Though, Giuliano understood the importance of getting this specimen studied, and gathered his team to dismantle part of the temporary exhibit, in order to gain access to the cabinet and get the specimen out of it. The history of the specimen is interesting in itself. It was bought by the museum from a taxidermist in Paris, which prepared it standing like a kangaroo, as were all taxidermy were prepared at the time. The specimen was identified as being “Perameles fasciata”. That species is now only recognised as a subspecies of the Western Barred-bandicoot, Perameles bougainville. Having analysed some of the data
already and closely examined the specimen, I think it actually is neither of those species, but instead Perameles notina, also not recognised as a separate species at the moment, but needs to be. The MSN had also rare specimens from the eastern side of New Guinea (Indonesia), which I examined and will be very important to understand the taxonomy of the New Guinean bandicoots. I also help identify some of the specimens that had been incorrectly identified or had not identification at all.
ZSM Munich
When I first contacted the Zoologische Staatssammlung Munchen (ZSM) in Munich, they had no record of having the type of Perameles myosuros. The species was described by Wagner in 1841, and said that the specimen
Figure 13 Oldest mounted Pig-footed Bandicoot at the MNHN, Paris.
Figure 14 The mounted specimen of the Western Barred-bandicoot at the MSN in Genoa.
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was in the collection in Munich. So going to Munich was a bit of a gamble, because I didn’t know for sure if I was going to see the specimen at all. The museum website also mentioned that many specimens got destroyed during World War II, so the likelihood of finding it was pretty grim. I took the gamble because the species had never been recognised because nobody except for Wagner had seen the specimen. Finding the specimen meant resurrecting a species forgotten in history, though it is extinct in the wild today. The ZSM is quite unique, as it doesn’t have a public gallery. It is a purely scientific collection. Anneke van Heteren welcomed me and set me up first for the talk I was giving that morning before looking for specimens in the collection. We took out every single specimen of bandicoot and bilby out to a working bench, and it took about a minute to find what I came searching for. The skull itself had been labelled, probably by Wagner himself (Figure 15). Anneke then doubled check the publication, written in German, to see if the description matches the skull that we had found. Wagner was very thorough, so he mentioned in his description which part of the skull were broken, and every bit broken that was mentioned was also broken in our skull. And so, 176 years after Wagner described that species, we were the first two people to have seen that specimen. Unfortunately, no skin was located, so that was very likely destroyed in WWII.
The skull of Perameles myosuros was identical to some other specimens I had seen in other museums, but wasn’t quite sure what species they were. This was able to finally give them a name, and make sense of the entire species. This species, currently a synonym of the Western Barred-bandicoot, Perameles bougainville, used to occur only in the South West of Western Australia. It is much larger than Perameles bougainville, and it also very different in having females one and a half larger than males. Females larger than males are a rare occurrence in mammals, so this distinct biology tells us that it is a distinct species. I gave my talk that day, and met Martin Baehr, an entomologist that works on insects from the Kimberley in Australia, who then join Anneke and I for lunch and had an interesting
Figure 15 Skull of the type of Perameles myosuros, ZSM, Munich.
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discussion about Australia, Australian environment and the fossil record. I went through all other specimens in the collection afterwards. Anneke had some mystery kangaroo skulls on her desk that needed identifying and I offered to help her if she sent me photos of them when I got back to Australia. The skulls have now been identified to subspecies!
AMNH New York
The American Natural History Museum (Figure 16) has a larger proportion of New Guinean bandicoots than Australian bandicoots and bilbies, but I wanted to get there so I could score some of the rare New Guinean species to work out the relationship of all bandicoots and bilbies.
Eleanor Hoeger welcomed me in the collection and took out the types that they have. I was able to look at the largest bandicoot species, Peroryctes broadbenti, as well as one of the smallest, Microperoryctes murina.
A lot of the Australian material was actually subfossils (Chaeropus, Macrotis, Perameles, etc.); a lot came from caves in Western Australia. One specimen in particular was very interesting, being a juvenile of the extinct species from the Nullarbor that I working on. Juveniles are important in understanding how animals developed, and can help separate species with similar adults, but juveniles developing differently.
I spent the rest of the time studying the New Guinean species. I especially found the Stripped Bandicoots interesting with their strips that look like eyes on their rump, which I suspect is meant to deter predators from attaching them (Figure 17). There were 4 species described, but now only two are recognised, and it is unsure how they are related to one another.
Figure 16 American Natural History Museum, New York.
Figure 17 Stripped Bandicoots, AMNH, New York.
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Smithsonian Washington DC
The journey to the Smithsonian didn’t start well. My family and I got verbally abused on the train from New York, which resulted in me forgetting my laptop on the train. I did get it back a few days later, but I didn’t have it when I arrived at the Smithsonian, and couldn’t give my talk. Darren Lunde welcomed me on arrival, and after explaining the debacle, gave me some paper and pens so I could at least write down all the measurement (I still had the rest of my equipment with me). The collection was small, so this incident didn’t affect my ability to go through all the specimens, though I only had the time to measure and photograph the most important specimens.
EWU Cheney
The Eastern Washington University is located in Cheney, just outside of Spokane. This was the beginning of the Palaeontological part of my fellowship. I had contacted Dr. Judd Case many years ago, expressing interest in the fossil bandicoots that he had with him, and he offered at the time that if I made it to Spokane, we could study the fossils together. When I arrived at the University, Dr Judd Case was lecturing but had left a key to his lab with a colleague so I could get it and get started. All the specimens had been organised from oldest to youngest on the desk, with all the information I needed to get started. By the time Judd joined me, I had already gone through all of the material and I had a clear idea of what species I was looking at. At that point, we discussed how we would proceed. I would describe all specimen, photograph, analyse the data and start the paper. Judd would write the geology section about the fossil site.
Some of the specimens were of species that I had already worked on and named (Bulungu muirheadae, Bulungu campbelli, Bulungu palara, Madju variae) or that my student worked on (Kutjamarcoot brevirostrum). Some of the specimens represented four new species, including the oldest fossil bandicoot, and the oldest fossil bilby, around 26 million years old (Figure 19). After finishing working on the fossil
Figure 18 Fossil bandicoots and bilbies from the Etadunna and Wipajiri Formation, South Australia, currently held at EWU, Spokane.
Figure 19 Oldest fossil bilby from the Etadunna Formation in South Australia,
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bandicoots, I still had spare time in Cheney, so Judd suggested I help him also with the fossil dasyurids (carnivorous marsupials). So I finished the week working on Dasyurids.
UCMP Berkeley
The second stop on my Palaeontological journey was at the University of California, Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley. T. rex welcomed me on arrival (Figure 20), followed by Dr. Mark Goodwin, who showed me around the collection. Essentially here, I wasn’t expecting to find any new species in the collection, as I suspected others would have gone through and taken away all the goodies, but I did expect to find specimens that would complement the work I did with Judd in Cheney. I was pleasantly surprised to found the
missing jaw of Bulungu campbelli which I described a few years ago. The type specimen had been studied in the 1970s by a student, Colin Campbell, but he never got around to publishing his work. The specimen came to me, but one of the jaws was missing when I published the study, so finding it at the UCMP was a nice surprise. Other specimens found were additional specimens of Kutjamarcoot brevirostrum, and some fossil dasyurids that will be helpful to describe with Judd.
The rest of the specimens I found in the collection were much younger in age (Quaternary), collected from sites in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. Some of the material coming from the Nullarbor Caves was completely articulated (Figure 21). The Quaternary fossils will be very useful in filling gaps for the distribution of extinct species, or species with reduced distribution since European arrival in Australia. Knowing past distribution of species is
very important for conservation, as it help making decisions on where to reintroduce individuals of a species.
Figure 20 T. rex in the entrance of the UCMP.
Figure 21 An articulated Bettong specimen from a Nullarbor Cave, Western Australia, stored at the UCMP.
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Museum study
The Western Australian Museum (galleries) is currently closed, to build a New Museum by 2020. We used to have a discovery centre where parents could take their kids to learn and do activities which were age appropriate. The New Museum will not have a discovery centre, and as a result, activities for kids will have to be incorporated in the galleries. During my Churchill Fellowship, in my free time, I visited many museums with my family, and having a 2 year old, it was ideal to see other museums did well to get kids involved in the galleries. Most of the
museums I went to had dedicated discovery zones for kids, such as the AMNH in New York, so there wasn’t much done in the galleries to get kids involved. In two museums, where there was no discovery zone, the gallery displays were made to get kids involved.
The first was a temporary gallery on bears at the MNHN in Paris, which was full of flaps and buttons for kids to turn, open and push (Figure 22). It was a brilliant temporary exhibit, which integrated various fields (natural history, history, popular culture…) and also targeted people of all ages. The second was a small science museum next to Nymphenburg Castle in Munich (Figures 23 and 24). The displays themselves are probable a few decades old, but the way the whole museum was designed, took into account both
kids and adults. So there were steps to let kids see displays that were quite high, there were flaps at kids eye level so they had things to do (Figure 23), there was seats and screens mixed with object display, to get people to interact with the display (Figure 24). In most museums, people went past displays and didn’t read half of what was written, but in this museum, everyone would sit down and spend 5-10 minutes reading and interacting with the display,
Figure 22 Bear exhibit at MNHN, Paris.
Figure 23 Museum in Munich, designed for kids and adults.
Figure 24 Visitors interacting with the displays.
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kids and adults alike. This is I think what needs to be implemented in the New Museum in Perth in 2020, to make sure all visitors have the best experience during their visit. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The Churchill fellowship has resulted in brand new discoveries, and rediscoveries. Analysis of the results so far is confirming that the extinct Pig-footed Bandicoot was not one but two species. The Western Barred-bandicoot is a complex on at least 5 species, 4 of which had been named in the past, and one unnamed species in the Nullarbor region. The short-nosed bandicoots (genus Isoodon), bilbies (genus Macrotis) and some of the New Guinean bandicoots (genera Microperoryctes and Echymipera) are also currently underrepresented with more species than we currently recognise. More data needs to be collected in Australian museums in order to complete this research, and work out the exact number of species, including tissue sampling to recover and compare their DNA. Four new species of fossil bandicoot and bilbies have been identified from specimens from central Australia, which will help expand our understanding of the evolution of this marsupial group in Australia.
Organisations involved in conservation often use distribution maps in the decision making to work out where they will reintroduce a species. Unfortunately, some distribution maps are the result of lumping of multiple species together or incomplete work. There is a desperate need for some of the maps to be re-evaluated in light of new genetic and taxonomic work. Here, I hope that my research will help in the decision making, especially for the Western Barred-bandicoot, which is getting introduced in areas it never had occurred in before. This has the potential of being a big issue if it is not able to adapt to the new habitat it is being introduced to. As a result, it is best to use the subfossil record to work out its actual past distribution, and re-introduce it there.
The Churchill Fellowship provides the unique possibility for researchers in Australia to travel overseas to examine and study type specimens in museums, to have a better understanding of the species that occur in Australia, and discover new species. I would definitely recommend other researchers that need to have access to type specimens to also apply for a Churchill Fellowship in order to resolve issues in the groups they study, and discover new species.
I would also recommend researchers to take the time to have a more thorough browse through museum collections, as new species are often found amongst specimens of a known species. I have found a new species in the collection of Museum Victoria that way, and I was hoping to find more specimens of that species in collections overseas, but alas, no other specimens has turned up.
Finally, having met curators, collection managers, and researchers in museums and universities overseas, I have gain a lot of knowledge from sharing experiences in museum collection management, and gain new collaborators on research projects. The data I gathered during this fellowship will be used in many publications in the near future, through collaboration. I hope that this research will have a significant impact on our understanding of taxonomy, evolution and conservation of Australia marsupials.
