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"In Australia, the marsupial lions were the supremely specialised carnivores throughout at least the last 30 million years of Australian history.
Prior to European settlement around 5,000 remained in the wild on Tasmania. Beginning in the nineteenth century they were perceived as a threat to the livestock of farmers and bounty hunting was introduced. The last known of its species died in 1936 at Hobart Zoo in Tasmania.
The extinction of one of Australia's top predators, Thylacoleo carnifex – aka the marsupial lion – was likely a result of changing weather patterns and loss of habitat rather than human impacts, new research has found.
The massive Diprotodon optatum, from the Pleistocene of Australia, was the largest marsupial known and the last of the extinct, herbivorous diprotodontids. Diprotodon was the first fossil mammal named from Australia (Owen 1838) and one of the most well known of the megafauna.
Black-flanked Rock-wallaby
The Black-flanked Rock-wallaby, or Warru in the Western Desert, was once found in abundance across parts of Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory. It is now endangered. They live in groups of 10 to 100 individuals.
#1 Koala (Phascolarctos cinereus)
Koala is an iconic Australian animal native to the country and is the closest living member of wombats. In Australia, koalas are not limited to small regions; they can be seen in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, and Southern Australia.
The government of Australia has now officially recognized the Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola) as extinct. The animal seems to have disappeared from its home in the eastern Torres Strait of the Great Barrier Reef, scientists say.
Australia's tiger, also known as the lost Tasmanian tiger, roamed the Australian bush almost 100 years ago before going extinct. But, thanks to modern science, Australia's 'tiger' may be resurrected now instead of remaining lost.
A small brown rat which lived on a tiny island off northern Australia is the world's first mammal known to have become extinct due to “human-induced climate change,” the government says.
Brook and his fellow authors stress that, while their model shows there is a chance there might still be Tasmanian tigers in the world, that chance is extremely small, less than one percent.
Thylacoleo carnifex, the largest carnivorous Australian mammal known, may have hunted other Pleistocene megafauna like the giant Diprotodon.
It is estimated that at least 3,500 thylacines were killed through human hunting between 1830 and the 1920s. The introduction of competitive species such as wild dogs, foreign diseases including mange, and extensive habitat destruction also greatly contributed to thylacine population losses.
Sightings of exotic big cats in Australia began more than 100 years ago. The New South Wales State Government reported in 2003 that "more likely than not" there was a number of exotic big cats living deep in the bushlands near Sydney.
There are wild big cats in Australia
Large (sometimes black) feral dogs and dingoes, foxes and even wallabies explain some 'big cats' sightings, but not all of them. Australian big cats aren't just represented by eyewitness accounts and hazy photos, but by some pretty good photos, and also by a number of dead bodies.
Distribution. Drop Bears can be found in the densely forested regions of the Great Dividing Range in South-eastern Australia. However there are also some reports of them from South-east South Australia, Mount Lofty Ranges and Kangaroo Island.
It wasn't a normal cat.” From the early 1800s until the present day, there has been reports of these elusive creatures all across the Australian bush. They are most commonly referred to as panthers, a blanket term used to reference the dark/melanistic colour tone of leopards, jaguars and pumas.
What is the largest animal in Australia? The Red Kangaroo is the largest native terrestrial animal in Australia. The largest recorded male Red kangaroo stood 2.1 meters (6.9 ft) tall and weighed 91 kg (201 lb). Most mature male Red kangaroos however are slightly smaller, reaching around 1.8 meters (5.9 ft) tall.
There are no native hoofed animals, monkeys, cats or bears (and no truly native dogs, although the dingo has apparently been here for at least 3000 years), half of our mammals are marsupials, and we are the only continent with all three of the sub-classes of mammals (see below).
It's been 3,000 years since the Tasmanian devil's raspy shriek rang through the forests of mainland Australia. But now, thanks to a dogged reintroduction effort, 26 of these endangered tiny terrors have returned.
The dingo was the first placental mammal introduced to Australia by humans, around 4000 years ago.
The dingo is Australia's first introduced species, but until recently its history has been uncertain. The fact that there are no dingo fossils in Tasmania indicates that dingoes must have arrived after rising waters separated the island from the Australian mainland about 12,000 years ago.
The rarest animal in the world is the vaquita (Phocoena sinus). It is a kind of critically endangered porpoise that only lives in the furthest north-western corner of the Gulf of California in Mexico. There are only 18 left in the world. It is thought that they may be extinct in ten years.