Research suggests that the “completely unique” wolf-like Tasmanian tiger that thrived on the island of Tasmania before going extinct in 1936 may have survived in the wild for much longer than previously thought. Experts say there is also a small chance that they are still alive today.
Tasmanian tiger, also known as thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) carnivorous marsupials with distinct stripes down their back. This species was originally found throughout Australia but disappeared from the mainland nearly 3,000 years ago due to human persecution. It persisted on the island of Tasmania until a government bounty offered by the first European settlers in the 1880s devastated the population and drove the species to extinction.
“The Tasmanian tiger was completely unique among living marsupials,” he said. Andrew Pask (Opens in a new tab), a professor of epigenetics at the University of Melbourne in Australia who was not involved in the new research. Not only did it have its wolf-like appearance, but it was also our only marsupial predator. apex predators They make up very important parts of the food chain and are often responsible for stabilizing ecosystems,” Pask told Live Science in an email.
The last known Tasmanian tiger died in captivity at Hobart Zoo in Tasmania on September 7, 1936. It is one of the few animal species whose exact date of extinction is known, according to The Tasmanian Tiger Integrated Genomic Restoration Research Laboratory (TIGRR) (Opens in a new tab)which is led by Pask and It aims to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from the dead.
But now, scientists say the thylacine may have survived in the wild until the 1980s, with a “small chance” it could still be hiding somewhere today. In a study published March 18 in the journal macroenvironmental science (Opens in a new tab)The researchers scrutinized more than 1,237 sightings reported in Tasmania from 1910 onwards.
Related: Stunning color footage offers a glimpse of the last known Tasmanian tiger
The team estimated the credibility of these reports and where the thylacine might have persisted after 1936. “We used a novel approach to map the geographic pattern of its decline across Tasmania, and to estimate the date of its extinction after taking into account several uncertainties,” Barry Brook (Opens in a new tab)said Professor of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Tasmania and lead author of the study Australian (Opens in a new tab).
The researchers suggest that Thylacines may have survived in remote areas until the late 1980s or 1990s, with the earliest extinction date being in the mid-1950s. Scientists hypothesize that a few Tasmanian tigers could still be hiding in the state’s southwestern wilderness.
But others are skeptical. “There is no evidence to confirm any of these sightings,” Pask said. “The only interesting thing about the thylacine is how it has evolved to look so much like a wolf and so different from a tiger. other marsupials. For this reason, it is very difficult to tell the difference at a distance between a thylacine and a thylacine [a] A dog which is probably why we are still seeing so many even though no dead animal or unmistakable photo has been found.”
If the thylacine had survived for so long in the wild, Pask said, someone would have come across a dead animal. However, “it will be possible at this time [in 1936] Pask said some of the animals persisted in the wild. If there are survivors, there are very A few.”
While some people are searching for surviving Tasmanian tigers, Pask and his colleagues want to revive the species. “Because the thylacine is a recent extinction event, we have good samples and DNA of sufficient quality to do this completely,” Pask said. “The thylacine was also a human-driven extinction, not a natural one, and more importantly, the ecosystem in which it lived is still there, giving a place to return to.”
De-extinction is controversial and still very complex and expensive, according to Australian National Museum (Opens in a new tab). Those in favor of reviving the thylacine say the animals could boost conservation efforts. “The thylacine will certainly help restore balance to the Tasmanian ecosystem,” Pask said. “In addition, the key technologies and resources created in the thylacine de-extinction project will be critical right now to help preserve and conserve the endangered marsupial species.”
However, its opponents say that de-extinction distracts from preventing more recent extinctions and that the revived thylacine population would not be able to survive. “There is simply no prospect of repopulating a sufficient sample of genetically diverse individual thylacines that could survive and persist once released,” said Corey Bradshaw, Professor of Global Ecology at Flinders University. Conversation (Opens in a new tab).
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