The Tasmanian tiger is known as the marsupial wolf Thylacinus cynocephalus The last specimen died on the night of September 7, 1936, at Hobart Zoo, Australia. Tasmania tmag Museum researchers have now determined that the specimen seen in public photos and film footage is nothing like the Hobart female known as the last member of the species – Writes BBC.
Museum on Monday Advertising The last Tasmanian tiger was said to be an elderly female who was captured and sold to the zoo in May 1936 by someone named Elias Churchill. The exact details of the transaction have not survived, as the appropriation and sale were already considered illegal, but it was already known that the corpse had been handled by the preparers of TMAG, so that they could offer it for the education of posterity. As a first step in the present sensational discovery, a report made by him dated 1936/37 was found giving an account of the preparation of the skeleton and skin. Then the researchers began to look more closely at the museum’s collections.
The study of museology yielded results. Although not included in the catalog, the remains of the last thylacine were carefully prepared and preserved in one of the lockers holding the TMAG educational collection for illustrative purposes.
Previously on Qubit We wrote it, that the carnivores native to Australia and the surrounding islands had certainly died out from most areas due to competition with the dingo, while their last refuge, the island of Tasmania, was due to the sheep-breeding gall. The last wild specimen was shot in 1930.
There is also a video recording of a marsupial wolf, which was considered the last, but, according to them, the penultimate survived: David Fley, an Australian naturalist at Hobart Zoo, Tasmania, visited the keepers of an animal named Benjamin in December 1933, allowing him to photograph this special individual on 35mm film. A digitally restored color version of the video is available from the National Film Archive of Australia (NFSA) I uploaded it on YouTube.
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