An echidna bibliography part 2 of 2.

 This is a continuation from Part 1, to be found here.

Hope, J. Fossil vertebrates from Wombeyan Caves. pp 155–64 in, Wombeyan Caves. Sydney Speleological Society Occ. Pap. No 8. 1982.

Hulbert, A. J.; Reinald Pamplona; Rochelle Buffenstein; and W. A. Buttemer. Life and Death: Metabolic Rate, Membrane Composition, and Life Span of Animals. Physiological Reviews 87 (2007), 1175 – 1213.

Hulbert, A.J.; Lyn A. Beard and Gordon C. Grigg. The exceptional longevity of an egg-laying mammal, the short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) is associated with peroxidation-resistant membrane composition. Experimental Gerontology 43 2008) 729 – 733.

Hulbert, A.J.; Lyn A. Beard and Gordon C. Grigg. The possible role of membrane lipids in the exceptionally long life of the short-beaked echidna, Tachyglossus aculeatus. Australian Zoologist 35 (2) (2010) 154 – 159.

Iggo, A.; McIntyre, A.K. and Proske, U. Responses of mechanoreceptors and thermoreceptors in skin of the snout of the echidna Tachyglossus aculeatus. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 232 (1985): 261–77.

Jackson, Stephen and Colin Groves. Taxonomy of Australian mammals. Collingwood, Vic. CSIRO Publishing, 2015.

Jamison, John. Observations on Ornithorhynchus. Transactions of the Linnaean Society of London, 12: 584-585, 1818.

Janke, Axel; Ola Magnell; Georg Wieczorek; Michael Westerman and Ulfur Arnason. Phylogenetic Analysis of 18S rRNA and the Mitochondrial Genomes of the Wombat, Vombatus ursinus, and the Spiny Anteater, Tachyglossus aculeatus: Increased Support for the Marsupionta Hypothesis. Journal of Molecular Evolution 54 (2002):71 – 80.

Jenkins, F.A. Limb movements in a monotreme (Tachyglossus aculeatus): A cineradiographic analysis. Science 168 (1970): 1473–75.

Johnson, D.H. Mammals of the Arnhem Land expedition. Pp.427–515 in, Records of the American-Australian scientific expedition to Arnhem Land. Vol.4. Zoology. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press 1964

Jorgensen, J.M. and Locket, N.A. The inner ear of the echidna Tachyglossus aculeatus: the vestibular sensory organs. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B Biological Sciences 260 (1995): 183–190. Monotremes

Kerle, J.A. Historical survey of the vertebrate fauna in the vicinity of Uluru and Kata Tjuta. Pp. xv–xxiii in, Reid, J.R. W. Kerle, J. A. and Morton, S. R. (eds). Uluru fauna. The distribution and abundance of vertebrate fauna of Uluru (Ayers Rock – Mount Olga) National Park, N.T. Kowari 4. Canberra: Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service, 1993.

Kielan–Jaworowska, Z. Unknown structures in multituberculate skull. Nature 226 (1970): 974–6.

King, Phillip Parker, Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia performed between the years 1818 and 1822. 2 vols, London: John Murray, 1827.

Koyabashi, Shin. Live imaging of X chromosome inactivation and reactivation dynamics. Development Growth and Differentiation. 59 (2017), 493 – 500.

Krause, W.J. Brunner's glands of the echidna. Anatomical Record 167 (1970): 473–87.

Krefft G. , On the discovery of a new and gigantic fossil species of Echidna in Australia. Annals and Magazine of Natural History (series 4) 1 (1868): 113–114.

Krefft, G. Mammals of Australia. Sydney: Government Printer, 1871.

Krefft, G. Natural History, Section Monotremata. The Sunday Mail and New South Wales Advertiser 28 December 1872.

Krubitzer, Leah. What Can Monotremes Tell Us about Brain Evolution. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 353 (1372), (1998), 1127 – 1146.

Lady, A (Emma Macpherson), My Experiences in Australia, Being Recollections of a Visit to the Australian Colonies in 1856-7, 1860.

Lang, Jeffrey W. and Harry V. Andrews. Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination in Crocodilians. The Journal of Experimental Zoology 270 (1994):28-44.

Leach, William The Zoological Miscellany: being descriptions of new, or interesting animals (London, 1815) 3 v. 149 leaves of plates: col. ill.; 25 cm.

Lester, K.S. and Boyde, A. Scanning microscopy of platypus teeth. Anatomy and Embryology 174 (1986): 15–26.

Lewis, D. The Dreamtime animals: a reply. Archaeology in Oceania 21 (1986): 140–145.

Lewis, Darrell. Megafauna identification for dummies: Arnhem Land and Kimberley ‘megafauna’ paintings. Rock Art Research 34 (2017) 82 – 99.

Lidgard, Scott and Alan C. Love. Rethinking Living Fossils. BioScience. 68 (10) (October 2018), 760 – 770.

Lindenmayer, David B.; Michael A. McCarthy; Kirsten M. Parris and Matthew L. Pope. Habitat Fragmentation, Landscape Context, and Mammalian Assemblages in Southeastern Australia. Journal of Mammalogy, 81 (2000) 787 – 797.

Loh, Siew-May; Alexander W. Gofton; Nathan Lo; Amber Gillett; Una M. Ryan; Peter J. Irwin and Charlotte L. Oskam. Novel Borrelia species detected in echidna ticks, Bothriocroton concolor, in Australia. Parasites & Vectors 9 (2016).

Long, John et al. Prehistoric mammals of Australia and New Guinea: one hundred million years of evolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

Lyon, M.F. (April 1961). Gene action in the X-chromosome of the mouse (Mus musculus L.). Nature. 190 (4773): 372–3.

Lyon, M.F. (1977). Section II – Chairman’s address. [to symposium on evolution of sex determination and dose compensation for sex chromosomes]. pp 9S-98 in, Calaby, J.H. and Tyndale-Biscoe, C.H. (eds) Reproduction and evolution. Proceedings of the 4th on Comparative Biology and Reproduction. Australian Academy of Science: Canberra.

Macinnis, Peter. Curious Minds. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2012.

Macinnis, Peter. Mistaken for Granite. Amazon Books, 2020.

Macinnis, Peter. Not Your Usual Treatments. Amazon Books, 2017.

Macpherson, Mrs Allan (A Lady), My Experiences in Australia, Being Recollections of a Visit to the Australian Colonies in 1856-7. London: J. F, Hope, 1860.

Manger, Paul R.; Leslie S. Hall and John D. Pettigrew. The Development of the External Features of the Platypus (Ornithorhynchus Anatinus). Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 353 (1372) (1998). 1115 – 1125.

Mansergh, I. and Hercus, L.A. An Aboriginal vocabulary of the fauna of Gippsland. Memoirs of the National Museum of Victoria No.42 (1981): 107–22.

Martin, C. J. Thermal adjustment and respiratory exchange in monotremes and marsupials. A study in the development of Homothermism. Proceedings of the Royal Society. 68 (1901) 352 – 3.

Martin, R. Montgomery. History of the British Colonies, vol IV, Possessions in Africa and Austral-Asia. London: Cochrane and M’Crone, 1835.

Matthews, Jaya K.; Clare Stawski; Gerhard Körtner; Cassandra A. Parker and Fritz Geiser. Torpor and basking after a severe wildfire: mammalian survival strategies in a scorched landscape. Journal of Comparative Physiology B 187 (2017): 385–393.

McCarthy, F.D. (1976). Rock art of the Cobar pediplain in central western New South Wales. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies:, Canberra, 1976.

McCorist, S. & Smales, L. Morbidity and mortality of free-living and captive echidnas, Tachyglossus aculeatus, in Australia. Journal of Wildlife Disease 22 (1986): 375–380.

McKay. L.M.; Wrigley, J. M. and Marshall Graves, J.A. Evolution of mammalian X–chromosome inactivation: sex chromatin in monotremes and marsupials. Australian Journal of Biological Sciences 40 (1987): 397–404.

McMurchie, E.J.; and Raison, J. K. Hibernation and homeothermic status of the echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus). Journal of Thermal Biology (1975): 113–18.

Meredith, Louise Ann (Mrs Charles Meredith), Notes and Sketches of New South Wales. London: John Murray, 1844.

Miao, D. Cranial morphology and multituberculate relationships. Pp. 63–74 in, Szalay, F.S, Novacek, M.J. and McKenna, M.C. (eds) Mammal phylogeny. Mesozoic differentiation, multituberculates, monotremes, early therians, and marsupials. Springer-Verlag: New York, 1993.

Miklouho-Maclay, N. Temperature of the body of Echidna Hystrix Cuv. [Extract from Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, 8 425 – 6.] 1883.

Milewski, A. V.; Abensperg-Traun M and Dickman C. R. Why are termite- and ant-eating mammals smaller in Australia than in southern Africa: history or ecology? Journal of Biogeography 21 (1994): 529–543.

Morrow G.; Andersen N. A. and Nicol S. C. Reproductive strategies of the short-beaked echidna – a review with new data from a long-term study on the Tasmanian subspecies (Tachyglossus aculeatus setosus). Australian Journal of Zoology 57 (2009): 275–282.

Morrow, Gemma and Stewart C. Nicol. Cool Sex? Hibernation and Reproduction Overlap in the Echidna. PLosONE, June 2009, 4 (6) (June 2009) 1 – 5.

Moyal, A.M. Sir Richard Owen and his influence on Australian zoological and palaeontological science. Records of the Australian Academy of Science 3 (1976): 41–56.

Mudie, R. The picture of Australia. Whittaker, Treacher & Co., London, United Kingdom, 1829

Mulvaney, D.J. and Calaby, J.H. ‘So much that is new’ Baldwin Spencer, 1860–1929 .A biography. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1985.

Murray P. Chaloupka G. The dreamtime animals: extinct megafauna in Arnhem Land rock art. Archaeology in Oceania 19 (1984): 105–116.

Murray P. Late Cenozoic monotreme anteaters. In:, Augee ML (ed.) Monotreme biology. Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, Taronga Zoo, Mosman, New South Wales, 29–55, 1978a.

Murray, P. A Pleistocene spiny anteater from Tasmania Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania 112 (1978): 39–68.

Murray, P. F. A unique jaw mechanism in the echidna Tachyglossus, aculeatus. Australian Journal of Zoology 29 (1981): 1–5.

Murray, P. F. Australian megamammals: restorations of some late Pleistocene fossil marsupials and a monotreme. The Artefact 3 (1978): 77–99.

Musser, A. A piece of the platypus puzzle. Obdurodon reconstruction. Riversleigh Notes No 26 (1995): 2–4.

Musser, A. Riversleigh researchers Part 4 –Anne Musser discusses her project to flesh out the picture of our ancient monotremes. Riversleigh Notes No 20 (1993): 2–4.

Newman, E.M. Spiny anteater at Morialta. South Australian Naturalist 1962: 31.

Newsome, A.E.; Catling, P. C. and Corbett, L.K. The feeding ecology of the dingo II. Dietary and numerical relationships with fluctuating prey populations in south-eastern Australia. Australian Journal of Ecology 8 (1983): 345–66.

Newsome, A.E.; Corbett, L.K.; Catling, P. C. and Burt, R J. The feeding ecology of the dingo I. Stomach contents from trapping in south-eastern Australia, and the non-target wildlife also caught in dingo traps. Australian Wildlife Research 10 (1983): 477–96,

Nicol, Stewart & Niels A. Andersen. ‘The life history of an egg-laying mammal, the echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus)’. Écoscience, 14 (2007), 275-285.

Nicol, Stewart C. Energy Homeostasis in Monotremes. Frontiers in Neuroscience. 11 (2017), 1 – 17.

Nicol, Stewart C.; Cécile Vanpé; Jenny Sprent; Gemma Morrow and Niels A. Andersen. Spatial Ecology of a ubiquitous Australian anteater, the short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus). Journal of Mammalogy, 92 (1), 16 February 2011, 101–110.

Nowack, Julia; Christine Elizabeth Cooper and Fritz Geiser. Cool echidnas survive the fire. Proceedings: Biological Sciences, 283 (1828) (13 April 2016), 1 – 8,

Ogburn, William F. and Dorothy Thomas. Are Inventions Inevitable? A Note on Social Evolution. Political Science Quarterly, 37, (March 1922) 83 – 98.

Osborn, Henry F. Dr. Haacke’s discovery of the eggs of echidna. Science 5 (n.s.) (2 January 1885), 3.

Owen R. Evidence of a large extinct monotreme (Echidna ramsayi Owen) from the Wellington Breccia Cave New South Wales. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 185 (1884): 273–275.

Owen, R. On the marsupial pouches, mammary glands and mammary foetus of the Echidna hystrix. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 155 (1865):671–686.

Owen, Richard, Descriptive catalogue of the osteological series contained in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. London: Royal College of Surgeons of England. Museum, 1853.

Owen, Richard. On the Generation of the Marsupial Animals, with a Description of the Impregnated Uterus of the Kangaroo. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 124 (1834), 333-364.

Palmer T.S. The generic names of the three-toed echidna. Science N.S., 1 (1895).: 518-19.

Parrington, F.R. The problem of the origin of the monotremes. Journal of Natural History 8 (1974): 421–26.

Pascual, R.; Archer, M.; Jaureguizar, E.O.; Prado, J. L; Godthelp, H. and Hand, S.J. The first non-Australian monotreme: an early Paleocene South American platypus. Pp. 2–14 in Augee, M.L. (ed.) Platypus and echidnas. Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales : Mosman, N.S.W., 1992.

Pask, A. and J. A. Marshall Graves. Sex chromosomes and sex-determining genes: insights from marsupials and monotremes. Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences 55 (1999) 864 – 875.

Phillip, Arthur. The Voyage to Botany Bay. London: John Stockdale, 1789

Phillips, H. Intertidal echidna activity. Victorian Naturalist 107 (1991): 174.

Phillips, Matthew J.; Thomas H. Bennett; Michael S. Y. Lee and David B. Wake. Molecules, Morphology, and Ecology Indicate a Recent Amphibious Ancestry for Echidnas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , 106 (40) (Oct. 6, 2009), 17089 – 17094.

Pian Rebecca; Michael Archer and Suzanne J. Hand. A new, giant platypus, Obdurodon tharalkooschild, sp. nov. from the Riversleigh World Heritage Area, Australia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 33(6) (November 2013):1255 – 1259.

Pian, Rebecca; Michael Archer; Suzanne J. Hand; Robin M.D. Beck and Andrew Cody. The upper dentition and relationships of the enigmatic Australian Cretaceous mammal Kollikodon ritchiei. Memoirs of the Museum of Victoria 74 (2016): 97 – 105 .

Pickering, M. Garawa methods of game hunting, preparation and cooking, Records of the South Australian Museum 26 (1992): 9–23.

Pledge, N. The giant echidnas Zaglossus species. Pp. 46–47 in Quirk, S. and Archer, M. (eds) Prehistoric animals of Australia. Australian Museum: Sydney, 1983.

Pledge, N.S. (1980). Giant echidnas in South Australia. South Australian Naturalist 55: 27–30.

Pledge, N.S. The upper fossil fauna of the Henschke Fossil Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 28 (1990): 247–262.

Poignant, Axel, The improbable kangaroo and other Australian animals. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1965.

Pratchett, Terry. Small Gods. London: Corgi Books, 1993.

Pridmore, P.A. Terrestrial locomotion in monotremes. Journal of Zoology, London (A) 205 (1985): 53–73.

Proske, U. The electric monotreme. Australian Natural History 23 (1990): 289–295.

Ramsay, E. P. Notes of a species of echidna (Tachyglossus), from Port Moresby, New Guinea. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales 2 (1877):31–33.

Ramsay-Laye, Elizabeth. Social Life and Manners in Australia Being the Notes of Eight Years’ Experience by a Resident. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1861.

Reynolds, S.T. and Paul I. Forster, ‘A taxonomic revision of Tarenna Gaertn. and Triflorensia S. T. Reynolds (Rubiaceae: Ixoroideae: Pavetteae) in Australia. Austrobaileya, 7(1), 2005, 29-55.

Rich, T.H. Monotremes, placentals and marsupials: their record in Australia and its biases. Vickers-Rich, P. Monaghan, J.M. Baird, R.F. and Rich, T. (eds) Vertebrate palaeontology of Australasia: Melbourne: Monash University Publications Committee, 1991, 893–1070.

Riggs, R.D. (1990). Marsupials and mechanisms of X chromosome inactivation. Pp. 419–441 in Graves, J.A.M. Hope, R.M. and Cooper, D.W. (eds) Mammals from pouches and eggs: genetics, breeding and evolution of marsupials and monotremes. Australian Journal of Zoology 37(2–4). CSIRO: Melbourne.

Rismiller, P. (1993). Overcoming prickly problem. Australian Natural History 24(6): 22–29.

Rismiller, P. D. and Seymour, R. S. (1991). The echidna. Scientific American 264(2): 80–87.

Rismiller, Peggy D. and Frank Grützner Tachyglossus aculeatus. Mammalian Species, 51, Issue 980, 3 October 2019, 75–91.

Rismiller, Peggy, The echidna: Australia’s enigma, United States: Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, 1999.

Ritchie, A. (1985). Opal fossils. Flashes from Lightning Ridge. Australian Natural History 21: 396–98.

Rothschild Miriam. Dear Lord Rothschild: birds, butterflies, and history. Balaban, Glenside, Pennsylvania, 1983.

Rowe, M.J. and Bohringer, R.C. Functional organisation of the cerebral cortex in monotremes. Pp. 177–193 in Augee, M.L. (ed.) Platypus and echidnas. Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales : Mosman, N.S.W., 1992.

Rowe, M.J.; Mahns, D.A. and Sahai, V. Monotreme tactile mechanisms: from sensory nerves to cerebral cortex. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales 125 (2004), 301-317.

Rowe, T.; T.H. Rich; P. Vickers-Rich; M. Springer, and M. O. Woodburne. The oldest platypus and its bearing on divergence timing of the platypus and echidna clades. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 105, (2008) 1238–1242.

Rowe, Timothy; Thomas H. Rich; Patricia Vickers-Rich; Mark Springer and Michael O. Woodburne. The Oldest Platypus and Its Bearing on Divergence Timing of the Platypus and Echidna Clades. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105 (4) (Jan. 29, 2008), 1238 – 1242.

Ryan, James T. (‘Toby’), Reminiscences of Australia, Sydney, George Robertson, 1895 (there is a later facsimile edition).

Schopf, J. William. Microfossils of the Early Archean Apex Chert: New Evidence of the Antiquity of Life. Science 260 (1993), 640 – 6.

Semon, R. In the Australian bush and on the coast of the Coral Sea: being the experiences and observations of a naturalist in Australia, New Guinea and Moluccas. Macmillan & Co. Ltd. London, United Kingdom, 1899.

Sharman, G.B. Monotreme biology: Chairman’s summary of the Symposium. Australian Zoologist 20 (1978): 1–7.

Shaw, George. General Zoology. London: G, Kearsley, 1800.

Shaw, George. Myrmecophaga aculeata. The Porcupine Anteater. Naturalists’ Miscellany 3(1792).

Singley, Blake. ‘Hardly anything it for Man to eat’. History Australia, 9 (3), December 2012

Smith, Rev. Thomas. The Wonders of Nature and Art. Philadelphia: Robert Carr, 1806.

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Stokes, John Lort. Discoveries in Australia (2 vols). London: T. and W. Boone, 1846.

Strahan, Ronald (ed.). The Australian Museum Complete Book of Australian Mammals. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1983.

Stubbs, George. The Anatomy of the Horse. London: J. Purser for the author, 1766.

Summerell, A. E.; G .J. Frankham; P. Gunn and R. N. Johnson. DNA based method for determining source country of the short beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) in the illegal wildlife trade. Forensic Science International, 295 (2019) 46–53

Sutherland, A. (1896). The temperature of reptiles, monotremes and marsupials. Proc. R. Soc. Victoria 9, 57–67.

Tench, Watkin, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson. London: G. Nicol and J. Sewell, 1793.

Tench, Watkin, A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay, London: J. Debrett, 1789.

Thomas, R.W. A hole in the fence. South Australian Naturalist 53 (1978): 14–15.

Thomson, P.C. The behavioural ecology of dingoes in North-western Australia. III. Hunting and feeding behaviour, and diet. Wildlife Research 19 (1992): 531–541.

Triggs, B.; H. Brunner, and J. M. Cullen. The food of fox, dog and cat in Croajingalong National Park, south-eastern Victoria. Australian Wildlife Research 11 (1984): 491–99.

Twain, Mark Following the Equator. Hartford: The American Publishing Company, 1898.

Wallis, R. and H. Brunner. Predator scat analysis – availability of packing yarn and a report on an unusual dog scat from East Gippsland. Victorian Naturalist 101 (1984): 79.

Waterhouse, G. R. A Natural History of the Mammalia, vol 1. London: Hippolyte Baillière, 1846.

Watson, J.M.; J. A. Spencer; A. D. Riggs and J. A. M. Graves. The X chromosome of monotremes shares a highly conserved region with the eutherian and marsupial X despite the absence of X inactivation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 87 (1990): 7125–7129.

Weisbecker, Vera and Robin Beck. Marsupial and Monotreme Evolution and Biogeography, in Marsupials and Monotremes, edited by A. Klieve; L. Hogan; S. Johnston and P. Murray. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2015.

Welbourne, Dustin. There’s no such thing as reptiles any more – and here’s why. The Conversation, 15 October 2014, https://theconversation.com/theres-no-such-thing-as-reptiles-any-more-and-heres-why-31355

Werneburg, Ingmar and Marcelo R Sánchez-Villagra. The early development of the echidna, Tachyglossus aculeatus, and patterns of mammalian development. Acta Zoologica (2011) 92: 75–88.

White, John. Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales. London: J. Debrett, 1790.

Whitehouse, S. J. O. The diet of the dingo in Western Australia. Australian Wildlife Research 4 (1977): 145–50.

Whitley, Gilbert P. More Early History of Australian Zoology. Sydney: Royal Zoological Society of NSW, 1975.

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William Leach, The Zoological Miscellany: being descriptions of new, or interesting animals (London: E. Nodder, 1814 – 17) 3 volumes.

Wood, J. G. The illustrated natural history, vol 1. London: George Routledge and Sons.

Woolfall, S.J. History of the 13th Earl of Derby’s menagerie and aviary at Knowsley Hall, Liverpool (1806–1851). Archives of Natural History 17 (1990): 1–47.

Zhou, Qi, Embrace cytogenetics in a genomics era: a platypus story, https://natureecoevocommunity.nature.com/posts/embrace-cytogenetics-in-a-genomics-era-a-platypus-story, published 6 January 2021.

Zhou, Yang; Linda Shearwin-Whyatt; Jing Li. et al. ‘Platypus and echidna genomes reveal mammalian biology and evolution’. Nature, published online 6 January 2021.

Echidnas for kids

Whiting, Sue, (ill. Cate James). The Echidna Near My Place. Sydney: Walker Books, 2022. At last, a good echidna book to read to grandkids!

 

An Echidna Bibliography, part 1 of 2

Echidna-related references

This is a list of the works that I (at the very least) looked at and found interesting, and/or thought readers would find interesting, while I was writing two works on echidnas, one for adults who know their science, and one for general and younger readers. Two dated publications got me started, the works of Calaby and Whitley, both listed here. The rest of the sources came from me following my nose, and here, I bring C & W up to date.

Why are the references on the web? Well, in June 2022, I realised that this list was 15% of the general work and 8% of the serious work, a bit of an overload, so I wanted to cut this portion out. On the other hand readers might really want to track some of the references down, so I decided to put them up on the web as a PDF, and also as two blog entries, of which this is the first. While I feel no intimations of mortality, I am approaching advanced middle age, and I want this list to be available after I tumble off my perch.

Each of the sources will be identified in the book(s) when I find a publisher or publishers. I will keep you posted on any progress there.

You can find part 2 here. You can find the PDF version here.

Mainstream sources

Abensperg-Traun, M. and De Boer, E.S. The foraging ecology of a termite- and ant-eating specialist, the echidna Tachyglossus aculeatus. Journal of Zoology, London 226 (1992): 243–257.

Abensperg-Traun. M. Blindness and survival in free-ranging echidnas, Tachyglossus aculeatus. Australian Mammalogy 17 (1994): 11 7– 119.

Abensperg-Traun, M.; Dickman, C.R. and De Boer, E.S. Patch use and prey defence in a mammalian myrmecophage, the echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) a test of foraging efficiency in captive and free-ranging animals. Journal of Zoology, London 225 (1991): 481–493.

Abensperg-Traun, M. Food preference of the echidna, Tachyglossus aculeatus in the wheatbelt of Western Australia. Australian Mammalogy 11 (1988): 117 – 123.

Abensperg-Traun, M. Survival strategies of the echidna Tachyglossus aculeatus. Biological Conservation 58 (1991): 317–328.

Abensperg-Traun. A study of home range, movements and shelter use in adult and juvenile echidnas, Tachyglossus aculeatus, in Western Australian wheatbelt reserves. Australian Mammalogy 14 (1991): 13–21.

Akerman K. and Willing T. An ancient rock painting of a marsupial lion, Thylacaleo carnifex, from the Kimberley, Western Australia. Antiquity 83 (2009).

Akerman K. Interaction between humans and megafauna depicted in Australian rock art’ Antiquity 83 (2009).

Alam, Shayer Mahmood Ibney; Stephen D. Sarre; Dianne Gleeson; Arthur Georges and Tariq Ezaz. Did Lizards Follow Unique Pathways in Sex Chromosome Evolution? Genes, 9 (2018), 239;.

Alexander, W. B., Alexander Collie, Journal and proceedings of the Royal Society of Western Australia. 1 (1916), 139; 3 (1918), 37.

Allison, T. and Goff, W.R. Electrophysiological studies of the echidna, Tachyglossus aculeatus III.– sensory and interhemispheric evoked responses, Archives Italiennes de Biologie 110 (1972): 195–216.

Allison, T. and Van Twyver, H. Electrophysiological studies of the echidna, Tachyglossus aculeatus II.– dormancy and hibernation. Arch. ital. Biol. 110 (1972): 185–94.

Allison, T.; Van Twyver, H. and Goff, W.R. Electrophysiological studies of the echidna, Tachyglossus aculeatus I.–waking and sleep. Archives Italiennes de Biologie 110 (1972): 145–84.

Anonymous, A Visit to Australia and Its Gold Regions. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1853.

Anonymous. ‘The Platypus, Caution to Bathers’. Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser, 18 March 1869, 2.

Anonymous. ‘The Acclimatisation Dinner’, Argus, 16 October 1861, 5.

Anonymous. London Letter. Science, VII (176) (1886), 546.

Anonymous. Proceedings of the Section of Biology. Science, IV (84) (1884), 261.

Anonymous. Selected publications involving Riversleigh fossils and their significance. Riversleigh Notes No. 5: 4 unnumbered pages. 1989

Anonymous. Selected publications involving Riversleigh fossils and their significance. Additions to the list published in Riversleigh Notes Issue 5, April 1989. Riversleigh Notes No 7: 3, 1989.

Archer, M.; Godthelp, H.; Hand, S.J. and Megirian, D. Fossil mammals of Riversleigh, northwestern Queensland: Preliminary overview of biostratigraphy, correlation and environmental change. Australian Zoologist 25 (1989): 29–65.

Archer, M.; Hand. S. and Godthelp, H. Ghosts from green gardens. Preliminary hypotheses about changes in Australia’s rainforest mammals through time based on evidence from Riversleigh. Riversleigh Notes No 7: 4–7, 1989.

Archer, M. Mammals eggstraordinaire. Natural History 103 (1994): 48–49.

Ashwell, Ken W. S., Development of the Olfactory Pathways in Platypus and Echidna. Brain Behavior and Evolution, 79 (2012) 45 – 56.

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You can find part 2 here.

Planning for failure in order to succeed, 2

 The phrase "it seemed like a good idea at the time" seems to have no obvious source, but it is widely known. Britons regard it as a catch phrase of the Royal Marines, in north America, it is something heard from rednecks after a non-fatal attempt at breaking into the Darwin Awards. In Australia, it is known colloquially as "the streaker's defence", but streaking was far from my mind when I used the phrase on a street corner in Le Havre, one wet, miserable, cold and windy Thursday morning in early May. April in Paris may be grand, but May in Le Havre can lack a certain something.

It wasn't my fault we were there. Knowing the train timetable, and that the target museum would not open until 2.30, we had headed in a leisurely manner for the Gare Saint Lazare to get the train from Paris. We wandered around, deciding where we would go for a coffee and a paper, as our train was still two hours away, and then I made my mistake. I asked one of the staff in my best French where to get the train to Le Havre.

Never tell me the French lack efficiency. With a speed that amazed me, she rushed us along the open area and onto a train that was about to depart, assuring me in fluent English that we could buy tickets on the train, as indeed we could. We felt powerless to resist, and so we arrived, coffeeless and paperless in Le Havre, at the mouth of the Seine, some three hours before the town's natural history museum opened.

Le Havre is shabby and unattractive at that time of year. Brave, wet-suited souls sail little yachts in a basin, mother-henned away from the tidal outfall by three young men in inflatable runabouts, but most of the shops are closed, and workers are busy cleaning off the winter accumulation of seagull guano from the buildings that will, come summer, welcome the hordes of British tourists who land there from ferries. In early May, the streets of Le Havre are slippery with washed-down fish-rancid guano, and water dripping from buildings should never be trusted.

And we had three hours to kill in this unprepossessing and dingy town in unprepossessing and dingy weather. We stood on the corner as I spoke the standard phrase of mild regret, and then I looked up and saw with delight that we were on the corner of Rue La Pérouse and Rue Lesueur, outside a small bar that would be an ideal location for a soapish sitcom about the travails of tourists in a foreign land, or a remake of Irma La Douce. I was as much taken by the street names as I was by the prospect of warmth, though the thought of a coffee and a beer attracted me as well.

We entered, were made welcome, and quizzed by our host and his customers as to where we were from. I have just recently learned that the bar is in the centre of the town's small red light district, which may explain why we were slightly exotic specimens to them and why they seemed slightly raffish to us, but no matter. I explained that we were Australians, seeking two navigateurs français who had once left Le Havre and sailed to Australia. They were, I said gesturing dramatically at the street signs outside, La Pérouse and Lesueur. I was, I told them, researching some background for a historical account of the people who mapped Australia.

I like the French. They all reassure me that they speak English, just as soon as I speak French to them. Perhaps this is because, while we speak that accursed English tongue, we are from a small and interesting country that is neither Britain nor the USA. Perhaps they are just nice people. Working in relays we exchanged franglais comments on sundry matters, while we refuelled on coffee, tea and beer. 

If they knew that Lapérouse had actually departed on his last voyage from Brest, not Le Havre, they were too polite to say so, and I had to discover it later. In the end they directed us to a cheerful eatery and bade us fond adieus, though I am still uncertain why one of them said "auf wiedersehen" as we left. Perhaps he was confusing Austrians and Australians. Or maybe he was testing us.

We ate at the recommended place, found the Natural History Museum, admired Lesueur's specimens, but found little trace of Laperouse, then we walked back along his chilly damp street (which was at least guano-free), and caught a train back up the Seine valley. It was only later, as I dug further into the lives of my two navigateurs that I realised that each of them might, at various times in his life, have said "it seemed like a good idea at the time." Then it struck me that most pioneers would probably say that when they looked back on their actions.

Planning for failure in order to succeed, 1

Things go wrong. Murphy's Law prevails, or else Sod's Law does, or whichever law you prefer that predicts that failure is not only imminent but inevitable. In an operation with a hundred steps, or a thousand, or a million, sooner or later, one of them will be outside the safe limits. In some cases, that can lead to a cascade of disaster.

After the event, it is often easy, to pinpoint where an accident began, and while that can be mildly amusing, there is a more serious task, looking at the cases where the slip did not lead to a cascade of disaster. Human endeavour, human greed, human ambition and human hubris make it easy for things to go wrong, but human forethought can prevent much of it.

It is a curious thing that so many management and self-improvement books train their readers to prepare for success. It would be far more useful to train them to recognise the seeds of failure, the nature of folly, and the origins of truly awful copper-bottomed Grand Guignol folly. Most grand successes begin with grand schemes, but so do most grand failures.

Grand schemes fail for many reasons. Many times, the hopes and ambitions of the proponents flopped because the schemes were just too grand altogether, and the planners were not prepared for the unexpected. Perhaps they underestimated a hostile environment or an enemy's strength and ingenuity in a time of war, or the amount of background research needed.

Fame is all too often the spur that sets somebody on the path to a fall. Either fame or the pursuit of it, or its precursors, ambition and pride is prominent in the causal chain. Many historic failures happened because people played office politics and fought the enemy within, rather than the enemy without. If the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6) had devoted less of its time to internecine squabbles with the Special Operations Executive (also British) in World War II, both bodies might have achieved more and lost fewer agents (and we will gloss over the problems both sides had with de Gaulle's Free French, who were nominally on the same side).

Hand-in-hand with the pursuit of fame comes the pursuit of lucre, because most people realise that being disgustingly rich can make one famous. The Spanish Armada might have fared differently if either Drake or Howard spent a little longer looting separated Spanish ships, or if Medina Sidonia had seen what the English captains were doing, and sacrificed a rich-looking ship or two, in order to delay them.

In some cases, people could not communicate their needs fast enough, or there was some other breakdown in communications, or they were not given the materials or funds and resources they needed to do the job. Related to this are the failures where the players lacked an essential piece of information but pushed ahead anyhow — or had the information, but ignored it.

Then there were the structural failures, where operations were expanding too fast, and everybody fell into a spiral of reorganisation, or people found themselves in an group or society which became ossified by tradition and bureaucracy, or in a situation where the leadership gave way to panic, or a mob took over.

At other times, the authorities, driven by activists, went too far in the opposite direction, over-reacting and causing even greater problems. Other structural failures involved actual structures, mainly dams, cathedrals and bridges, falling down because they were not built properly.

True, some of the world's great failures were simple bad luck, but more came about because people were either ungifted amateurs or plain stupid or both. Of course, when you start to examine some of the most terrible failures, you begin to realise that there were flaws all over the place, so that identifying a single cause of failure is either pointless or impossible. It is more a matter of wonder that anything does go right in this world, that success is so common.

My favourite success is one in which I was involved, but can take no credit for it. A perceptive and clever supervisor sent me out to talk to the 'old hands' after I took over a politically sensitive operation. I was told to talk to these people, tap into their experience, find out what had gone wrong and been fixed, what had nearly gone wrong, and what might have gone wrong, but hadn't.

Thanks to a bunch of committed people, and for the price of a few beers and coffees, I tapped into perhaps half a century of hard work, experience and wisdom on dealing with vomit, bomb threats, theft, hysteria, locks that would not budge, flood, fire, conspiracy and more, and I gathered in neat solutions for most of them and work-arounds for the rest. When something did go wrong, it was close enough to one of the scenarios that was in our Compendium of Disaster Great and Small, and we narrowly avoided the cascade to disaster.

In many factories where safety and risk are key issues, the company will keep a "black book". This lists past problems, their causes and their solutions, all carefully recorded. In a few companies, young engineers are encouraged to try to second-guess where failures may happen. Undergraduates in engineering and architecture are commonly given course work on classic past failures, which should mean they avoid repeating old mistakes, but what of future disasters?

The failures I hate are those like Union Carbide's poison spill at Bhopal in India, where nobody had the good sense of my boss. No young engineers were sent out to look at similar factories, ranging from oil refineries to cement works to other insecticide plants, to get a sense for what might go, wrong, and how it could be fixed. Just one valve in the right place at Union Carbide's plant, and thousands of lives might have been saved.

Somebody might have thought of a better pathway that did not use toxic methyl isocyanate to make the pesticide, or somebody might have questioned the wisdom of a process where the toxic intermediate product was stored, rather than being converted immediately.

My favourite failures are the ones where people ought to have known what they were doing, and ought to have known that what they were doing was not a good idea, but they went ahead and did it anyhow. And even when it turns out that their preferred site for their proposed swimming resort was in a malarial swamp with poison trees, deadly snakes, rabid bats and voracious crocodiles, they will still smile ruefully and tell you that it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Fang the fauna

This is a verse collection with a back-story.

This work had its origins in a creative writing workshop that I was engaged in, probably in 1986. We were discussing commercial tendencies, and with an eye on the looming 1988 Bicentennial, I invented a fictional work, which I dubbed:

Gastromania Australiana, or
The Bicentennial Rhyming Cookbook.

That deliberate stalking-horse, that epitome of crude commercialism fed the debate and gave us a good laugh before we moved on, but that night, a few rough verses crept out, and a week later, I shared them with the workshop. We had another laugh, and again moved on. At home, the scribbles went into the bottom drawer, but in the summer of 1986-87, I had a thought.

As a classically-trained biologist, I knew how to illustrate with stipple, and I would sit in boring bureaucratic meetings, as pompous oafs droned on, wasting time. To keep myself sane, I drew stippled doodles, usually trying to create a nicely shaded sphere, but somehow, as I drew, each of them acquired textures, eyes and appendages, like this one on the right.

More importantly, I saw that the clowns all watched intently as my doodles emerged, gaining character, and slack-jawed, they forgot to drone. An intelligent colleague, a real artist, saw this, and sat opposite me, drawing scenes. We found that by each of us settling between two twits, we could mute four of them, leaving the intelligent people to deal with issues uninterrupted.

I ended up with lots of drawings, and some of them matched my verses, so in mid-1987, a limited but illustrated edition (one copy) of Gastromania Australiana emerged. For reasons that I won’t go into, that single copy was instrumental to my being awarded a post, managing a large creative staff, but the single copy was filed on my shelves and forgotten.

Early in 2022, I noted on Facebook that finding a mosquito in your tea was less bad than finding a fly in your soup, a friend called Nisaba asked if I swallowed the mossie, I said that I had not, and mentioned that I had once written some verses on eating mosquitoes, and having, as I approach advanced middle age, sorted most of my backburner books, I turned to the verses again.

I revisited, revised, refurbished, rewrote them and augmented, adding verses and new illustrations, so now here it is, with a more catchy title. Thanks fellow writers in the workshop, thanks boring drones, thanks Nisaba, thanks Rotring and Artline who supply my pens, thanks to family and friends who have giggled.

Now here's a taste of seriously bad taste, within the meaning of the act.

First, a small calming foreword for the PC brigade: 

Friends who know my email address can request almost the entire thing, as a 17-page 2 meg PDF. I'm not at all sure that this one is commercial, but it would make a great stocking-stuffer, and that's how I plan to pitch it in a few weeks, once I have ironed out a couple of scansion issues.