After applying the suggested updates (179) an error message at the very end of the process suggested me to run apt-get install -f.

Since it is a fairly new Ubuntu install (x86) I didn't setup anything in Thunderbird yet. Different error messages (see details) were generated with the -f process:

~$ sudo apt-get install -f
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  thunderbird
Suggested packages:
  latex-xft-fonts
The following packages will be upgraded:
  thunderbird
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/20.8 MB of archives.
After this operation, 594 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
(Reading database ... 170457 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace thunderbird 11.0.1+build1-0ubuntu2 (using .../thunderbird_12.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.12.04.1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement thunderbird ...
dpkg-deb (subprocess): data: internal gzip read error: 
'<fd:4>: invalid code lengths set' dpkg-deb: error: subprocess <decompress> returned error exit status 2
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives  /thunderbird_12.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.12.04.1_i386.deb (--unpack):
short read on buffer copy for backend dpkg-deb during `./usr/lib/thunderbird/libxul.so'
 Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/thunderbird_12.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.12.04.1_i386.deb
 E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)