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Academic insights reached millions
The story that garnered the most interest from our audience in April was this piece on why new COVID variants necessitate a global ‘maximum suppression’ strategy. It has been read more than 1.1 million times!
It was also republished by more than 28 other media outlets around the world -
including The Guardian, ABC and the South China Morning Post. 84% of its readers were from countries outside Australia.
The second most-read piece was Ritesh Chugh from CQUniversity’s piece on how to deal with water damage to your phone, which received more than 570,000 reads. Ritesh said:
“As an academic, such a wide readership provides great testimony of our public scholarship”
Named Mike, or
M
ikebulli, in honour of Flinders University lizard researcher Professor Mike Bull, the tiny skink is 25-million-years-old, making it the continent s oldest skink.
Professor Bull passed away in 2016, but not before inspiring generations of reptile scientists. Our colleague Professor Bull s long-term ecological studies of sleepy lizards were a massive contribution to biology, said Professor Mike Lee from Flinders University. The fossil record is essentially data from a long-term natural ecological study, so it s fitting that this fossil lizard is named in honour of Mike.
Palaeontologists and volunteers from Flinders University and the South Australian Museum focused on parts on the lake, seven hours drive north of Adelaide, where other fossils were previously unearthed. The area was once lush and green and is considered the continent s unique fauna cradle, particularly for its reptile diversity.