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Commentary: A research project to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from oblivion reignites debate about de-extinction. A preserved thylacine body lies curled up on a metal table. Two scientists in white lab coats handle the body. PIC at LINK (Getty) The preserved body of a thylacine being prepared for display in an Australian museum in 2005. When Hank Greely, a law professor at Stanford University, took to the stage at 2013's TEDx De-extinction conference in Washington, DC, he posed a simple question. "De-extinction," he started. "Hubris? Or hope?" The answer, he offered to a smattering of laughter, was "Yes." Greely's...

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...

The Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, is one of Australia's most iconic species. Even though it has been extinct since 1936, the slender, striped marsupial maintains its place in Australian mythology because of a constant string of supposed sightings that has captivated the public and the media. Just last year, one group claimed to have spotted the "Tassie tiger" padding through Australia's forests. The claims were never verified. Sadly, the Tasmanian tiger is gone -- but with advances in biotechnology, that might not have to be the case. A group of researchers from the University of Melbourne plan to bring the...

A Principal component analysis of ontogenetic cranial shape for each species included in the study. PC1 represents age-related shape change (left to right), whereas PC2 separates herbivorous and carnivorous taxa. The thylacine and wolf display parallel similarities throughout ontogeny, compared with other marsupials. B–D Subsampling of cranial shape into bone groups with shared embryonic tissue origins. The thylacine and wolf show shape overlap between bones of B FNP and D MES origin, but not in bones of C PA origin. Animal images were used under CC BY 4.0 open licence. ================================================================== Micro-CT scanning and digital reconstructions have been used to...

Biologists briefly brought the extinct Pyrenean ibex back to life in 2003 by creating a clone from a frozen tissue sample harvested before the goat's entire population vanished in 2000. The clone survived just seven minutes after birth, but it gave scientists hope that "de-extinction," once a pipedream, could become a reality. Ten years later, a group of researchers and conservationists gathered in Washington, D.C., today (March 15) for a forum called TEDxDeExtinction, hosted by the National Geographic Society, to talk about how to revive extinct animals, from the Tasmanian tiger and the saber-toothed tiger to the woolly mammoth and...

A comparison of museum specimens has found that thylacines on mainland Australia were smaller than those that persisted into modern times in Tasmania, and significantly smaller than dingoes. The last known Tasmanian thylacine died in 1936. Measurements of the head size and thickness of limb bones of the semi-fossilised remains of thylacines and dingoes from caves in Western Australia have revealed that, on average, dingoes were larger than thylacines. “In particular, dingoes were almost twice as large as female thylacines, which were not much bigger than a fox,” says ecologist Dr Mike Letnic, an ARC Future Fellow in the UNSW...

Scientists have detailed a significant proportion of the genes found in the extinct Tasmanian "tiger". The international team extracted the hereditary information from the hair of preserved animal remains held in Swedish and US museums. The information has allowed scientists to confirm the tiger's evolutionary relationship to other marsupials. The study, reported in the journal Genome Research, may also give pointers as to why some animals die out. The two tigers examined had near-identical DNA, suggesting there was very little genetic diversity in the species when it went over the edge. I want to learn as much as I can...

A University of Adelaide project led by zoologist Dr Jeremy Austin is investigating whether the world-fabled Tasmanian Tiger may have survived beyond its reported extinction in the late 1930s. Dr Austin from the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA is extracting ancient DNA from animal droppings found in Tasmania in the late 1950s and ‘60s, which have been preserved in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. “The scats (droppings) were found by Eric Guiler, Australia’s last real thylacine expert, who said he thought it more probable they came from the Tasmanian Tiger rather than a dog, Tasmanian Devil or quoll,” Dr...

A TASMANIAN tiger or thylacine ran across a road north of Colac about 12.50am last Monday, according to Warrion man Steven Bennett. Mr Bennett said he was driving between Cressy and Warrion when he spotted the animal, believed to have been extinct since 1936. ``It ran across the road in front of me (and) paused before it went into the bushes and long grass (on the side of the road),'' he said. The 24-year-old said the animal's stripes, tail and hind legs convinced him it was not a dog, feral cat or fox. A Tasmanian tiger ``is pretty much the...

Australian researchers are reviving a project to bring an extinct animal known as the Tasmanian tiger back from the dead through cloning. Three months after the Australian Museum shelved plans to clone the tiger -- also known as a thylacine -- a group of universities and a research institute are planning to revive the project, the Sun-Herald newspaper reported. Mike Archer, dean of science at the University of New South Wales, was quoted as saying that researchers from NSW and Victoria states were likely to join the programme, which involves recovering DNA from a pup preserved in 1866 to breed...