Progress Made on Tasmanian Devil Illness

October 9th, 2007 in Biology /
Progress Made on Tasmanian Devil Illness (AP)

In this undated handout photo from Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries, a healthy Tasmanian Devil which is unaffected from a deadly disease that is driving the carnivorous marsupial toward possible extinction. Researchers estimate the wild population has fallen from 140,000 in the 1990s to 80,000 due to Devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD), a mystery illness that creates grotesque tumors on the animals' snouts that lead to starvation within a year. (AP Photo/Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries)

(AP) -- Australian researchers have made a breakthrough discovery in understanding a rapidly spreading facial cancer that has decimated the country's Tasmanian Devil population.

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