Posted on 03/03/2022 9:59:51 AM PST by Red Badger
Nearly 90 years after the last thylacine died, a group of scientists at the University of Melbourne, Australia, are attempting to bring the extinct marsupial back to life
Thylacines, also known as Tasmanian tigers (despite being a marsupial and looking nothing like a tiger apart from their stripy back), are thought to have gone extinct back in 1936, when Benjamin – the last confirmed member of the species – died in captivity at Hobart’s Beaumaris Zoo.
Reports of thylacine sightings in the wild continued long after Benjamin died, with many people hopeful that they might still be alive out there somewhere (stranger things have happened; this giant tortoise was rediscovered ambling on an island in the Galapagos in 2019, 113 years after it had last been sighted).
In September 2019, Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water, and Environment released a document of eight possible (but unverified) sightings over the previous three years. The Thylacine Awareness Group even believes the animal still roams around mainland Australia.
However, only occasional grainy footage has thus far been offered as evidence. One study in 2017 put the odds of the animal still surviving at 1.6 trillion to one, while another in 2018 disagreed with the math but still came down on the side that it was probably extinct, though "there is enough uncertainty to at least leave this open as a slight possibility."
Despite persisting in Tasmania until the 1930s, the species is believed to have been wiped out from mainland Australia around 3,000 years ago.
We have released 21-second newsreel clip featuring the last known images of the extinct Thylacine, filmed in 1935, has been digitised in 4K and released.
Be sure to check out the footage of this beautiful marsupial. #NFSAOpenOnline #TasmanianTigerhttps://t.co/s3JSAnmFck pic.twitter.com/FSRYXCTTMy
— NFSA -National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (@NFSAonline) May 19, 2020 Scientists have since sequenced the genome of the animal – and with this, the team at Melbourne is hoping to "de-extinct" them. The lab has received a $5 million philanthropic gift to help them on their quest.
“Thanks to this generous funding we’re at a turning point where we can develop the technologies to potentially bring back a species from extinction and help safeguard other marsupials on the brink of disappearing,” Professor Pask, from the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne said in a press release.
“Our research proposes nine key steps to de-extinction of the thylacine. One of our biggest breakthroughs was sequencing the thylacine genome, providing a complete blueprint on how to essentially build a thylacine.”
“The funding will allow our lab to move forward and focus on three key areas: improving our understanding of the thylacine genome; developing techniques to use marsupial stem cells to make an embryo; and then successfully transferring the embryo into a host surrogate uterus, such as a dunnart or Tasmanian devil."
The team believes that the reintroduction of the species would be beneficial not just for the resurrected species itself, but for entire ecosystems.
“Of all the species proposed for de-extinction, the thylacine has arguably the most compelling case," Pask added. "The Tasmanian habitat has remained largely unchanged, providing the perfect environment to re-introduce the thylacine and it is very likely its reintroduction would be beneficial for the whole ecosystem."
Ping!.....................
Want to see one? Look behind an Aussie conservative if you can find one.
The late Dr. Michael Crichton was a visionary genius.
Cool. Now do wooly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers. The 21st century should finally start living up to the billing.
And giant wolves...................
I wonder if it would be easier to “resurrect” a marsupial than a mammal, since the “surrogate mother” won’t have to carry them fully to term?
Also, which species would they pick for a surrogate? With mammoths, elephants are the obvious choice. For a Tasmanian tiger, would they use a Tasmanian devil, or a wombat, or what?
“and saber-toothed tigers”
No thanks, Joe Exotic.
Roo...................
Always wanted to hunt a wooly mammoth. Not by myself...
Does it even have a near-species relative still around in Australia? From the standpoint of taxonomy what’s close? The Taz & Wombat looks-wise seem a stretch.
What could go wrong?
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Yes. He was indeed. I found it fascinating to read about the movie “The Andromeda Strain” where he wanted the movie to be ultra-realistic, and actually purchased state of the art equipment for the time that would have been used to identify the pathogen.
In the movie, to determine the size of a filtering material they needed to be safe to breathe the air, they had a machine with set filter sizes, and would expose a susceptible creature like a guinea pig or rat to contaminated air making the filter successively finer until the animal was not infected, and they could determine the size of the pathogen to X nanometers depending on the filter that provided protection.
Yes. He was a talented and interesting guy. One of my absolute favorite books of his is “State of Fear”. He so accurately captured the essence of the environmental moonbats on the Left and thoroughly skewered them. One of my favorite scenes from the book is the good guys being tailed by the evil bad guys in a car as they drove around. If it were the Mafia, they would be driving Cadillacs. If it were the KGB they might be tailing you in a “Black Maria”.
In “State of Fear” the evil bad guys bent on murder drove...Toyota Prius’!!!
I’d love to live to see this. If the technology is ever developed to bring back extinct species zoos will become very interesting.
Tasmanian devil is pretty closely related despite the appearances.
Upon further research, this might be the best choice:
https://australian.museum/learn/animals/mammals/spotted-tailed-quoll/
“would expose a susceptible creature like a guinea pig or rat to contaminated air making the filter successively finer until the animal was not infected”
I would think the opposite approach, starting with a very fine filter then enlarging it until the subject WAS infected would save you a lot of money on animal subjects...
It'll be cool if they can accomplish resurrecting the species. To do it, I'd guess they'll try with the closest genetic match.
My guess is they would use the laws of halves.
Try one, if it is fatal, go to half size. Try again.
If still fatal, halve it again. Then when you get one where the subject doesn’t get infected, you go halfway up to where you were before that.
Full disclosure-I have no idea if that REALLY is the way they did it back then. But the thing I read about Crichton said he actually spent a HUGE sum of money on equipment to have in the scenes, and consulted with the best people in the world on how it was done at that time.
“Marsupials are mammals. They’re just non-placental ones.”
Yes, but in common vernacular, when people say “mammal” they mean “placental mammals”.
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