Cupboard

ANI Washington, December 6 A specimen retrieved from a cupboard of the Natural History Museum in London has shown that modern lizards originated in the Late Triassic and not the Middle Jurassic as previously thought. This fossilised relative of living lizards such as monitor lizards, gila monsters and slow worms was identified in a stored museum collection from the 1950s, including specimens from a quarry near Tortworth in Gloucestershire, South West England. The…

The body of the last known living Tasmanian tiger was thought to be lost forever, but researchers have rediscovered the animal's preserved pelt and skeleton in a museum cupboard in Tasmania.Striped like a tiger, with a somewhat dog-like body, the Tasmanian tiger – or thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) – is in fact a large marsupial, more closely related to quolls and numbats. The pouched mammals were once found across Australia, though by the early 20th century its range was limited to Tasmania. We now know the remains…