Mar 03, 2021 11:12 AM EST
Forest scincid lizard on Christmas Island and 12 animals on the list, including the desert bettong, large cheeked jumping mouse, and arena barred wallaby. The government of Australia has formally acknowledged that 13 of the endemic species went into extinction and this includes 12 mammals and the earliest reptile known to have vanished since the colonization by the Europeans.
(Photo : Egor Kamelev)
The increase of the dozen species of mammal species shows the inevitable position of Australia as the capital for the world mammal extinction, raising the entire number of species known to have gone into extinction to 34.
No one out of the 13 seems like a surprise. Almost all of the species extinctions are memorable, with most of them vanishing between the 1850s and 1950s. But the record also comprises two species that got lost, the pair from Christmas Island in the ocean of Indian over the last decade.