Eighty-eight years ago today, the last known Tasmanian tiger died, prompting reflection on the role it played in the species’ extinction. Now, a team of researchers has announced the discovery of the thylacine’s earliest known ancestor: a heavy-metal marsupial with jaws so strong it could eat bones and teeth.
The team’s findings were published today in Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Several marsupials that lived in Australia during the late Oligocene Epoch (approximately 24 million years ago) are described. These marsupials are the ancestors of the Tasmanian tiger or thylacine, a dog-like creature except for the distinctive black stripe of the same name on its back. The thylacine can open its jaws very wide and usually feeds on marsupials and small rodents. The Tasmanian government considered the animal a threat to livestock and put a bounty on its head, leading to factors such as habitat loss and overhunting that led to the animal’s extinction.
Recent papers describe some ancient ancestors of the thylacine that were smaller than modern animals, which before going extinct were the largest living carnivorous marsupials.
Timothy Churchill said: “It was once proposed that Australia was dominated by reptilian carnivores during this 25 million year period, but with the fossil record of marsupial carnivores such as these new thylacines, This view is gradually being disproven with each new discovery.
These three newly named marsupial ancestors are Tim Faulkneri, peter brignimba fishand black-spotted stink bug. They were discovered in the Riversley World Heritage area, which contains Australia’s richest deposits of mammal fossils. According to the Australian Museum, the thylacine disappeared from the Australian continent as late as 2000 years ago.
Tim Faulkneri It is the oldest known thylacine and the largest of the three thylacines, weighing between 15 and 24 pounds (7 and 11 kilograms). Among these three fossils, Nepenthes peterbridge It appears to be more closely related to the Tasmanian tiger than to other fossil ancestors, leading the team to conclude that it may be the oldest direct ancestor of the recently extinct carnivore.
Study co-author Michael Archer, a paleontologist at the University of New South Wales, said in the same press release that the now-extinct animals showed “very different dental adaptations, suggesting the existence of several unique carnivorous ecologies during this period.” Bit” . “All but one of the lineages that led to the modern thylacine became extinct about 8 million years ago.”
The last known thylacine died in a zoo in 1936, although some researchers believe the animal was more likely to become extinct sometime in the 1960s. The thylacine is a hot topic right now because a bioscience company claims to intend to resurrect a surrogate thylacine, an animal based on the thylacine genome that could occupy the same environmental niche as the vanished marsupial.
So-called “anti-extinction” is easier said than done, although last year a team successfully recovered RNA from animals, the first time such a molecule has been recovered from an extinct species. Until then, we can admire the true thylacine of yesteryear—that is, the Oligocene.
