'It's like looking at ghosts': inside the Australian Museum's extinction cabinets

When people encounter the cabinets cataloguing the mammals wiped out since colonisation, they often cry. But what is the most useful way to grieve the destruction of a species?Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastAt the far end of one of the mammal rooms in the maze of offices and labs behind the Australian Museum in Sydney stand two anonymous grey metal cabinets. Although there is nothing to distinguish them from the storage units elsewhere in the room, they are freighted with particular significance.These cupboards, known within the museum as the "extinction cabinets", contain specimens of 24 of the 39 mammal species that have been wiped out since Europeans invaded Australia. They hold an index of loss stretching back almost 240 years. Continue reading...