Class : Mammalia
Infraclass : Marsupialia
Order : Dasyuromorphia
Family : Thylacinidae
Genus : Thylacinus
Species : Thylacinus cynocephalus
The Tasmanian tiger or thylacine is a wolf-size carnivorous marsupial once common across Australia.is a marsupial predator that was last seen alive in the 1930s. A baby Tasmanian tiger collected 108 years ago has provided enough high-quality genetic material for researchers to sequence the animal’s entire genome which may one day become a tool for resurrecting the extinct animal and creating a hope for many others.
The last known thylacine died in Hobart Zoo in 1936, but the species may have persisted in the wild into at least the 1940s. The species was declared extinct in 1982. At that time, the DNA sequences they had were highly degraded, making sequencing an entire genome almost impossible. But, now the researchers at the University of Melbourne got an young specimen with surprisingly well-preserved genetic material.
The researchers did make a novel discovery: Genetic diversity in the thylacine population plummeted sometime between 70,000 and 120,000 years ago. Thylacines were already declining on the mainland long before Aboriginal people arrived in Australia sometime before 65,000 years ago. Human hunting ultimately wiped out the thylacine. The study is published in the journal Nature, Ecology and Evolution.
Link to original paper: https://www.nature.com
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