The thylacine is an extinct carnivorous marsupial. It was native to Tasmania, New Guinea, and the Australian mainland. 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. Intensive hunting encouraged by bounties is generally blamed for its extinction.
About Thylacine in brief
The thylacine is an extinct carnivorous marsupial. It was native to the island state of Tasmania, New Guinea, and the Australian mainland. 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. Intensive hunting encouraged by bounties is generally blamed for its extinction. Other contributing factors may have been disease, the introduction of dogs, and human encroachment into its habitat. Its closest living relatives are the Tasmaniaian devil and the numbat. The thylACine was one of only two marsupials to have a pouch in both sexes. The pouch served as a protective sheath, covering the external reproductive organs. It probably appeared about 2 million years ago, during the Early Pleistocene Pliistocene. The species was separated out into its own genus, Thylinus, originally described as Finchilla, meaning “pouch” or “sack” The common name derives directly from the name of the Greek genus, originally called Didelphis, meaning ‘pouch’ or’sack’ The modern name for the species is Thylus cynocephala, which means ‘dog-headed opossum’ and is used in the constructed language of Palawa kani. It had a stiff tail and abdominal pouch similar to a kangaroo’s, and dark transverse stripes that radiated from the top of its back, reminiscent of a tiger.
By the time the first European explorers arrived, the animal was already extinct in mainland Australia and New Guinea. The first definitive encounter was by French explorers on 13 May 1792, as noted by the naturalist Jacques Labillardière, in his journal from the expedition led by D’Entrecasteaux. Europeans may have encountered it in Tasmania as far back as 1642, when Abel Tasman first arrived in Tasmania, but positive identification of the animal cannot be made from this report, since the tiger quoll is similarly described. In 1805 William Paterson, the Lieutenant Governor of Tasmania,. sent a detailed description for publication in the Sydney Gazette. He also sent a description of the thylaine in a letter to Joseph Banks, dated 30 March 1805, five years after first European settlement of the island. In 1796, Geoffroy Saint-Hroyaire created the genus Didel Memphis, where he placed the thilacine in 1810. To resolve the mixture of Greek and Latin nomenclature, the species name was altered to cynus 24, 24 in 1824, by Temminck, originally from the Greek θύλακά, meaning ‘pouch’ or ‘sack’. The modern Thylacinus was described as ‘finchilla’ in 1820, but was later renamed ‘Thylinus Finchauna’ by the British.
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This page is based on the article Thylacine published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
