Word: wombat
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...Melbourne's Monash University aims to change that, in October announcing plans to store dingo samples in its gene bank alongside those from endangered species like the northern hairy-nosed wombat and the Sumatran tiger. Monash's Norwood Animal Conservation Group, which oversees the program, needs $A10,000 in start-up funding to gather reproductive and tissue samples from perhaps 100 wild and captive dingoes as "an insurance policy" against extinction, says project director Shae Cox. The funding offers aren't rolling in, but Cox senses public opinion is starting to shift in favor of the animals' long-term survival...
...team is patient with neophytes fascinated by Riversleigh's extinct megafauna (though many of these creatures were known already from deposits elsewhere in Australia), among them the rhinoceros-sized Diprotodon optatum, distantly related to the wombat; and the 3-m tall, 400-kg flightless bird Dromornis stirtoni, which had a beak large and sharp enough to tear the flesh off a kangaroo, if not as a predator then as a scavenger. Extracting the fossils of such creatures is harder than finding them. These palaeontologists aren't eggheads: they spend seven hours each day under a scorching sun levering boulders...
...might expect from a scholar who has written wittily on Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti's obsession with the Australian wombat, Trumble saves much of his best material for the story's marginalia. There are the early 18th century "gurning" competitions of York- shire ("The frightfull'st grinner/ Be the winner") and the various cosmetic condiments that have accompanied the smile over the years, from the 18th century English vogue for wearing mouse-skin eyebrows, to the Japanese tooth-blackening practice of ohaguro. How the author manages to connect the 16th century European habit of dog turd-throwing, Dutch painting...
Parents who believe their 4year-olds get enough encouragement to become fire fighters or U.S. Presidents may want to try a new pair of hardcovers that could inspire the next Samuel Pepys. Diary of a Worm, by Doreen Cronin, with illustrations by Harry Bliss, and Diary of a Wombat, by Jackie French, with illustrations by Bruce Whatley, are aimed at kids 4 to 8. In the former, the titular worm goes to school, gets punished for eating his homework and taunts his sister because "her face will always look just like her rear end." The wombat, a bearlike Australian native...
...bath, a letter Charles sent Diana on their 13th wedding anniversary "with lots of love," a computer disc detailing her personal accounts, a ceremonial sword, "One Lilac Dress with Beige Hanger and Cellophane Dust Cover," 13 cards and letters that "Mummy" wrote William, including one that begins "My darling Wombat." The bric-a-brac of the dead is always sad. That Diana's was picked through in a courtroom full of tabloid reporters taking shorthand was doubly so, but also powerfully reminiscent of her life, both tawdry and irresistible: little bits of the goddess preserved in plastic bags, relics...