Latest Thylacine Stories

When, how and why modern humans first stood up and walked on two legs is considered to be one of the greatest missing links in our evolutionary history. Scientists have gone to the far ends of the earth – and the wonderful creatures in it - to look for answers to why we walk the way we walk. In the latest such search, researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (South Africa) have taken a closer look at bipedal kangaroos and wallabies and how they move compared...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new study led by researchers at the University of Adelaide concludes that humans alone may have been responsible for the extinction of Australia's iconic native predator, the Tasmanian Tiger (thylacine). The study, published in a recent issue of the Journal of Animal Ecology, used a new population modeling approach to contradict the widespread belief that disease must have been a factor in the thylacine's extinction. The Tasmanian...

While the Tasmanian tiger was being driven to extinction in the early 20th century by territorial interlopers and government bounties, the population of the bizarre marsupial also suffered from an extreme lack of genetic diversity, according to a study published this week in PLoS ONE. The Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine, was as large as a medium-sized dog that roamed across both Australia and Tasmania and had no natural predators.  It was one of only two marsupials, along...

  Hunted to extinction in the early twentieth century for allegedly being a killer of sheep, Australia’s iconic Thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger because of its striped back, has been found not guilty in a new study published in the Zoological Society of London’s Journal of Zoology. “Our research has shown that its rather feeble jaw restricted it to catching smaller, more agile prey,” said lead author Marie Attard, of the University of New South Wales Computational...

The thylacine had the head and body of a dog, but its striped coat resembled a cat and it carried its young in a pouch like a kangaroo. These enigmatic, iconic creatures of Australia and Tasmania have been given conflicting names such as the "marsupial wolf" and the "Tasmanian tiger."Researchers at Brown University may have discovered the answer as to what type of creature the extinct thylacine was. Bones of the thylacines, along with other dog-like and cat-like animals such as pumas,...

A recently publsihed study reports that over a third of mammal species considered extinct or missing have been rediscovered, and a lot of effort is wasted in trying to find species that have no chance of being found again. According to the United Nations, species face an accelerated rate of extinction because of pollution, climate change, habitat loss and hunting, and that this rate of loss is putting ecosystems and economies at even greater risk. Researchers at the University of Queensland...

Australia's famed Tasmanian devil has been labeled endangered due to an infectious and lethal cancer, the government announced.Devil facial tumor disease exterminates the animals in three short months by spreading all over their faces and mouths, stopping them from eating."This disease has led to the decline of about 70 percent of the Tasmanian devil population since the disease was first reported in 1996," Environment Minister Peter Garrett announced in a statement."Strong action is being...

Scientists found that Tasmanian "tigers" may have gone extinct due to inbreeding and are considering resurrecting the Australian marsupials 70 years after they ceased to exist. "Our goal is to learn how to prevent endangered species from going extinct," said Webb Miller of Pennsylvania State University, who helped lead the international study.The researchers used the same method used to study the DNA from extinct woolly mammoths' hair to get a good comparison of the gene sequences...

By Saey, Tina Hesman Tasmanian tiger DNA turns on gene in mouse Tasmanian tigers are back. Sort of. A small bit of the extinct marsupial's DNA is alive and well in the cells of some genetically engineered mice. Researchers have produced proteins from mammoth and Neandertal genes in cells. But the new study, published May 19 in PLoS ONE, is the first to show activity of an extinct piece of DNA in an animal. Scientists from the University of Melbourne in Australia and the University of Texas...

DNA from an extinct creature has been resurrected in a live animal for the first time. The genetic material, extracted from the extinct Tasmanian tiger, proved functional in mice. "As more and more species of animals become extinct, we are continuing to lose critical knowledge of gene function and their potential," said researcher Andrew Pask, a molecular biologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Reviving genes from extinct animals can't bring them...