Tasmanian tiger skin may help in quest to bring back species
AN EXTINCT Tasmanian tiger’s skin which sat in a New Zealand drawer unrecognised for 76 years may help scientists bring the species back to life.
The skin is believed to be one of the bestpreserved specimens of the wolflike animal, which Australian scientists hope to bring back to life by inserting its DNA into the cells of a related living species, most likely the smaller Tasmanian devil.
It was acquired in 1923 by Whanganui collector Archie Robertson and sat in a drawer of his house with a Tasmanian devil skin until the family sold the property in 1999.
The family then lent the skins, along with Mr Robertson’s stuffed bird collection, to the Kahutara Taxidermy Museum near Featherston, where four students from Victoria University recognised the distinctively striped Tasmanian tiger skin about a year ago.
The carnivorous animal, also known as the thylacine, has been extinct since around 1936 and a database lists only 78 remaining skins worldwide.
The Whanganui skin has been sold to the National Museum of Australia, which said it would make an announcement ‘‘in the coming months’’.
It is understood the figure paid was about $200,000.
Mr Robertson’s daughter, Janet Withers (88), said it was ‘‘a record price’’ for a skin and the money was divided evenly between her four children.
Kahutara Museum owner John McCosh said £135,000 was paid for a rug quilted from thylacine pelts in 2002, but he believed the Whanganui skin was better preserved.
‘‘Apparently there is the potential for looking at maybe cloning parts of it,’’ he said.
Former Australian Museum direc
❛ Apparently there is the potential for looking at maybe
cloning parts of it
tor Mike Archer announced plans to recreate a living Tasmanian tiger 19 years ago using DNA from a pup that was preserved in 1866.
His successor shelved the project in 2005, but Mr Archer is now involved in the Lazarus Project, which aims to resurrect the southern gastricbrooding frog, a smaller animal which became extinct in the 1980s.
Mr Archer said that his team had extracted DNA from the extinct frog and enabled it to reproduce itself.
‘‘It’s quite clear the extinct animal’s DNA has been replicating itself, but we still don’t have a tadpole. We think we understand what we have to do,’’ he said.
‘‘My whole goal was simply to get another animal across the line.
‘‘You have to get over people’s pessimism or innate scepticism.
‘‘Then we can go back to the thylacine and others.’’
The project uses somatic cell nuclear transfer, extracting the nucleus from a cell of the extinct animal and swapping it into an egg of the nearest living relative.
Another team of scientists published the complete genome of the Tasmanian tiger in 2017, showing that it was 89% the same as a Tasmanian devil but quite different from a wolf even though its head shape was virtually identical.
A New Zealand expert on ancient DNA, Otago Palaeogenetics Laboratory director Nic Rawlence, said he opposed resurrecting extinct species because their spaces in the ecosystem had now been filled by others and research money should go to conserving existing species.
But Mr Archer said somatic cell nuclear transfer could preserve endangered species, and the thylacine’s extinction was so recent that no other species had taken its place.
‘‘The habitats that it occupied in Tasmania are still there and are still intact.
‘‘The animals that it ate are still there. There is no competitor.’’ — NZME