US Study Looks at How Islands Are Saving Natives
“In 1894, a pregnant house cat escaped from a lighthouse on Stephens Island, in the Marlborough Sounds. She had her kittens in the wild, where they went feral. Within 13 months, a native bird…
Tag Archives: Tuatara
Finding the Famous Five
When he was last in New Zealand British zoologist Mark Carwardine spent two weeks travelling the length and breadth of the country, “in search of an outlandish menagerie of animals known as the ‘Small…
Native Methuselah
“The animal that may well be New Zealand’s most bizarrely instructive species at first glance looks surprisingly humdrum,” writes The New York Times’ Natalie Angier. “The tuatara — whose name comes from the Maori…
Coup for Longevity
A one-month old tuatara has been discovered at Wellington’s Karori Wildlife Sanctuary Zealandia, the first baby tuatara to be seen on the mainland in two centuries. “We are all absolutely thrilled with this discovery,”…
Not So Drowned Continent
Fossils of an 18 million year old ancestor to the tuatara have been found outside of Saint Bathans, Otago, filling a huge void in the fossil record, and casting doubt on a widely held…
Henry’s Heyday
A 111-year-old tuatara named Henry has successfully sewn his seed after over fifteen years in solitary confinement. Henry, who lives at the Southland Museum and Art Gallery, was assumed over the hill and kept…
Better Late Than Never
30 October 2008 – For the first time in approximately two hundred years, a tuatara has been discovered nesting on the New Zealand mainland. The event happened at Wellington’s Karori Wildlife Sanctuary, where four…
Tuatara: Taking it Easy?
BBC News features research undertaken by Victoria University Tuatara Research Group (Professor Charles Daugherty and student Nicola Nelson) into the habitat of New Zealand’s “living fossil”, the tuatara. “They’ve been around since the time of the dinosaurs, so…
