Thylacine

The thylacine or Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) was the largest carnivorous marsupial of modern times. The last known individual died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936, after decades of persecution.

🧬 Field Guide Specimen: Open Thylacine in the CRV Science Field Guide to log the specimen, see its place among the Mammals lineages in the Cladogram Explorer, and test your recall in the Red List conservation game.

The thylacine had a dog-like head and body, a stiff tail and dark stripes across its back, a textbook case of convergent evolution with canids. It was a pouched marsupial, and both sexes had a pouch. It likely hunted wallabies and other mammals at dusk and at night.

Sheep farmers blamed the animal for losses, and the Tasmanian government paid bounties on thylacines between 1888 and 1909. Disease, habitat loss and competition from dogs probably contributed to the decline. Protection was declared in 1936, only weeks before the last known animal died.

Researchers have sequenced a thylacine genome from museum specimens and recovered RNA from a preserved skin, and some groups talk about de-extinction. Sightings still occur, but none has been confirmed.

• Tasmanian Devil — a surviving Tasmanian predator
• Gray Wolf — a convergent canid