Kailah Thorn

Technical Officer – Terrestrial Vertebrates

Terrestrial Zoology

BSc PhD

Technical Officer Kailah Thorn with a bobtail lizard

Contact

(08) 9212 3732 kailah.thorn@museum.wa.gov.au

Research


  • Taxonomy and systematics of fossil lizards and snakes, primarily skinks
  • Extinction and palaeoecology of Cenozoic vertebrate communities
  • Comparative osteology of reptiles
  • Presents talks and provides media coverage of research on evolution and lizards.
  • Co-supervisor to honours and post-graduate students at local and national universities.

Collections:

  • Manage the terrestrial vertebrate collections (birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians)
  • Facilitate loans of WA Museum vertebrate skins, tissues, skeletons and whole organisms with other institutions
  • Registration of new specimens into the collections

Services (to other bodies):

  • Chair of the WA Division of the Geological Society of Australia
  • Member of the IUCN Skink Specialist Group

Selected Publications

Kailah's full publication list can be found here

2023

Thorn, K.M., Fusco, D.A., Hutchinson, M.N., Gardner, M.G., Clayton, J.L., Prideaux, G.J. and Lee, M.S.Y. 2023. A giant armoured skink from Australia expands lizard morphospace and the scope of the Pleistocene extinctions. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 290: 20230704 http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.0704

Thorn, K.M. ‘Pups’ of the Swan Coastal Plain, in Thylacine, The History, Ecology and Loss of the Tasmanian Tiger, CSIRO Publishing 137-139.