The last wild Tasmanian tiger was killed between 1910 and 1920, and
the last captive one died in 1936 at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania,
Australia. In 1986, the creature was declared extinct. The
extinction marked the demise of the only member of its family,
Thylacinidae, and the worlds largest marsupial (pouched)
carnivore. It weighed about 65 pounds and had a nose-to-tail length
of six feet.
However, rumored sightings of the creature continue to emerge from
the island's ancient forests.
Now zoologist Jeremy Austin of the Australian Center for Ancient
DNA and his colleagues are examining DNA from animal droppings
found in Tasmania in the late 1950s and 1960s, which have been
preserved in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
Eric Guiler, a thylacine expert who found the scats, said he
thought the droppings probably came from the Tasmanian tiger rather
than a dog, Tasmanian devil or a quoll, according to Austin.
If we find thylacine DNA from the 1950s scats it will be
significant, Austin said. This would prove that either the
thylacine produced the scat or a [Tasmanian] devil ate a thylacine
and dropped the scat. Either way that is proof that the thylacine
was there at the time.
If they were to find evidence the Tasmanian tiger was alive between
its last sightings in the wild (between 1910 and 1920), that would
mean the beast was hidden from humans for 40 to 50 years.
If they could survive this long with no real physical proof, then
it does add a little more hope to the possibility that they could
survive another 50 years without ever being caught, killed [or] hit
by a car, Austin told LiveScience. This chance is of course not
great, but the glimmer of hope is ever so slightly brighter.
