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It's sad this animal is extinct, it's such a great example of convergent evolution and comparisons with the wolf (mammal) originally got me interested in thylac
by ajeet_dhaliwal 10y ago
It's sad this animal is extinct, it's such a great example of convergent evolution and comparisons with the wolf (mammal) originally got me interested in thylacine when I was a child.
- gonzo41 10y agoIt could be still out there, out west. Tasmania has the kind of wilderness in it in which you can walk in and not walk out. Especially on the west coast.
- neaden 10y agoI mean, it's physically possible that that is the case. But it has been 80 years without finding a living one or a recent corpse makes it pretty much a sure thing.
- sosborn 10y agohttp://www.dinofish.com/discoa.htm http://www.dinofish.com/discoa.htm
- neaden 10y agoThe Ocean is a very different place, we can't see into it as well, corpses and bones disappear, there is no physical evidence to be left etc. The Tasmanian tiger is on land, it dwells on the ground, and is an apex predator. This is exactly the kind of species that would be easy to find compared to a mouse, a fish, or an ape.
- sosborn 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_taxon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_taxon
- o_____________o 10y agoRediscovering animals thought to be extinct (for hundreds of years in some cases) is surprisingly common for something you'd reasonably assume never happened. Whales, bugs, amphibians, reptiles, fish, primates, ungulates...
- Jeema101 10y agoThere have been many claimed sightings since then, though, including one in 1995 by a wildlife official: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine#Unconfirmed_sightings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine#Unconfirmed_sighting... It's not out of the realm of possibility that there's still a very small population out there...
- civilian 10y agoDo we have DNA for Tasmanian tigers? I wonder if it would be valuable to have a biologist or forest ranger collecting fur samples that rub off on trees in the area where there's been some sightings.
- nrgb 10y agoI'm Tasmanian. I grew up on a farm in the middle of the state where we had a number of sightings (circa 1970s) which were never reported.