The Tasmanian tiger looked like a dog but carried a pouch
The last known thylacine died at Hobart Zoo on 7 September 1936. Striped like a tiger and shaped like a wolf, it was actually a marsupial, and both males and females had pouches. Australia now marks that date each year as National Threatened Species Day, and scientists have mapped its entire genome.
The thylacine is a textbook case of convergent evolution. It filled the niche that wolves and wild dogs occupied in the north, and evolved sharp teeth, strong jaws, raised heels and a similar build, despite being unrelated to any placental predator. Its closest living relatives are other carnivorous marsupials such as the Tasmanian devil, from which its lineage split an estimated 42 to 36 million years ago. It could open its jaws unusually wide and seems to have been a solitary ambush hunter of small and medium prey.
Adults stood about 60 centimetres at the shoulder, with a stiff, kangaroo-like tail. A 2020 study of 93 specimens put average weight at around 16.7 kilograms, with males noticeably heavier than females. Its yellow-brown coat carried 15 to 20 dark stripes across the back and rump, bolder in young animals. Nineteenth-century settlers called it a zebra wolf, dog-headed opossum or hyena; Aboriginal Tasmanians had many names, including coorinna, and kaparunina is used in Palawa kani.
It disappeared from mainland Australia and New Guinea some 3,600 to 3,200 years ago, possibly after dingoes arrived, but dingoes never reached Tasmania, where several thousand survived. Rock art of the animal dates back to at least 1000 BC, including petroglyphs on Western Australia's Burrup Peninsula. Abel Tasman's crew in 1642 reported tracks of beasts with claws like a tiger, and French explorers made the first certain sighting in 1792.
Seen as a threat to sheep, it was hunted hard in the nineteenth century under government bounty schemes. Disease, dingo competition, habitat loss and climate change also played a part. Despite many searches and reported sightings since 1936, none has been confirmed. The animal remains Tasmania's emblem, appearing on the state coat of arms, and efforts to clone it continue.
Source: Thylacine
