Findings emerge about Last Tasmanian Tiger, Australia’s sole predatory marsupial, long believed extinct since 1936. A new discovery highlights a hidden chapter in museum history, reported from the ocean country on Monday.
The final specimen of the Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) died in custody at Hobart Zoo on September 7, 1936. The remains were later transferred to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG).
This older female specimen was captured by a hunter in the Florentine Valley on Tasmania and sold to Hobart Zoo in May 1936, and it has now been recontextualized within TMAG’s archives.
lost remains
For years, curators and researchers searched for the animal’s remains without success. Since no 1936 thylacine materials appeared in the zoological collections, it was assumed the body had been discarded, according to a TMAG statement by researcher Robert Paddle.
Researchers Paddle and Kathryn Medlock will publish their findings in the scientific journal Australian Zoologist, revealing that Tasmanian Tiger remains reached TMAG in 1936, though their arrival was not properly recorded by the museum’s taxidermists, aided by a key document that traces the animal’s remains.
The team also uncovered that remains of this extinct specimen, including the floating skin and skeleton, were used for traveling exhibits and stored in a locker within the museum’s education section.
According to Medlock, curator of the vertebrate zoology division at TMAG, the leather was carefully tanned as plain leather by the museum’s taxidermist William Cunningham, enabling easy transportation and use as a classroom demonstration item about Tasmanian marsupials.
The thylacine, a marsupial known for tiger-like stripes on its back, once inhabited the Australian mainland and the island of New Guinea. Climate change is believed to have contributed to its disappearance from these regions about three millennia ago.
The island of Tasmania remained the last stronghold for the species, yet its extinction accelerated with European settlement in Oceania during the 18th century. A vigorous hunting campaign between 1830 and 1909, accompanied by bounties for killing this cattle-eating predator, hastened the decline.
Although the Tasmanian tigers vanished 85 years ago with the death of the final individual at Hobart Zoo, the species was only officially declared extinct in the 1980s.
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