The hunt goes on for mysterious thylacine
IF you were to take as read that the thylacine (dog-headed pouched one) or Tasmanian Tiger is extinct, you could, I believe, be missing a trick and as I commented last week, this is not your average abominable snowman-type species here, this wonderful creature actually existed.
Take this and believe at your peril from my first dive into Google.
“The thylacine – Thy-leseen - now extinct, was the largest known carnivorous marsupial mammal, evolving about four million years ago.
“The last known live animal was captured in 1933 in Tasmania.
“It is commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger because of its striped lower back, or the Tasmanian wolf because of its canid-like characteristics.
“It was native to continental Tasmania, New Guinea and the Australian mainland.”
For a start, the last live animal was not captured in 1933.
Long-known of by the native Aborigines, as coorinna, lorinna and lagunta, it was first described by explorers in the 17th century as a tiger-like beast or hyena-dog creature and in later years it would be the focus of intense scientific scrutiny.
It was eventually officially described by science in 1808 as Didelphis cynocephala, or ‘zebra-wolf’, before later being categorized by its modern taxonomy in 1824 by Dutch ornithologist and zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck.
It is said that the thylacine disappeared from the mainland and New Guinea long before British colonisation began in the early 1800s.
This was possibly due to competition from humans – there was a bounty on its head from sheep farmers – and also for food from the introduced dingoes.
Throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s