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On the 7th of September each year, Australia observes National Threatened Species Day, so we thought this would be a good time to look at a species we couldn’t save. The following is an extract from the Encyclopedia of Mammals on the extinct thylacine (or Tasmanian tiger).

Up to the time of its extinction, the thylacine was the largest of recent marsupial carnivores. Fossil thylacines are widely scattered in Australia and New Guinea, but the living animal was confined in historical times to Tasmania.

Superficially, the thylacine resembled a dog. It stood about 60cm (24in) high at the shoulders, head–body length averaged 80cm (31.5in), and weight 15–35kg (33–77lb). The head was doglike with a short neck, and the body sloped away from the shoulders. The legs were also short, as in large dasyurids. The features that clearly distinguished the thylacine from dogs were a long (50cm/20in), stiff tail, which was thick at the base, and a coat pattern of black or brown stripes on a sandy yellow ground across the back.

Most of the information available on the behavior of the thylacine is either anecdotal or has been obtained from old film. It ran with diagonally opposing limbs moving alternately, could sit upright on its hindlimbs and tail rather like a kangaroo, and could leap 2–3m (6.5–10ft) with great agility. Thylacines appear to have hunted alone, and before Europeans settled in Tasmania they probably fed upon wallabies, possums, bandicoots, rodents, and birds. It is suggested that they caught prey by stealth rather than by chase.

At the time of European settlement, the thylacine appears to have been widespread in Tasmania, and was particularly common where settled areas adjoined dense forest. It was thought to rest during the day on hilly terrain in dense forest, emerging at night to feed in grassland and woodland.

From the early days of European settlement, the thylacine developed a reputation for killing sheep. As early as 1830, bounties were offered for killing thylacines, and the consequent destruction led to fears for the species’survival as early as 1850. Even so, the Tasmanian government introduced its own bounty scheme in 1888, and over the next 21 years, before the last bounty was paid, 2,268 animals were officially killed. The number of bounties paid had declined sharply by the end of this period, and it is thought that epidemic disease combined with hunting to bring about the thylacine’s final disappearance.

The last thylacine to be captured was taken in western Tasmania in 1933; it died in Hobart zoo in 1936. Since then the island has been searched thoroughly on a number of occasions, and even though occasional sightings continue to be reported to this day, the most recent survey concluded that there has been no positive evidence of thylacines since that time. In 1999, the Australian Museum in Sydney decided to explore the possibility of cloning a thylacine, using DNA from a pup preserved in alcohol in 1866, although it admitted that to do so successfully would require substantial advances in biogenetic techniques.

Adapted from the entry on the ‘Large Marsupial Carnivores’ in The Encyclopedia of Mammals edited by David MacDonald, which is available online as part of Oxford Reference. Copyright © Brown Bear Books 2013. David MacDonald is Founder and Director of Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit.

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Image credit: a 19th century print of a Thylacine Wolf from Australia. William Home Lizars. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post The thylacine appeared first on OUPblog.

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There are lots of articles about Rory Root from all across comics... Here's Tom Spurgeon, and Brian Hibbs and this is a lovely tribute and an excellent round-up.

He was such a good guy. The world of comics is better for him having been here.

...

So there's news articles that say that Steven Moffat is taking over Doctor Who, and other articles saying that Russell T Davies is leaving and then there's lots of emails arriving today saying things like,

'Lo Neil,
As a great fan of Doctor Who, I've been dancing around the room after hearing that Steven Moffat is taking over as Chief Writer and Executive Producer of the series in 2009. Russell T Davies has done a brilliant job bringing the series back to life, but now that he's decided to leave I can't think of anyone better to take over than Mr. Moffat.

Anyway- my real question is whether or not we'll finally see a Neil Gaiman DW episode? We're all quietly hoping the idea came up during your dinner back in March in Bar Shu... I know you're a very busy person, but it would be the perfect combination for so many fans!
Rachel

I think it's great news -- what Russell Davies did over the last few years was remarkable: as a writer and as a show-runner he brought Doctor Who back, sure-footed and smart and with a heart. (And even the few mis-steps were easily forgiveable. Maddy and I agreed that there were bits of plot in "The Doctor's Daughter" that necessitated not just suspension of one's disbelief but the surgical extraction of said disbelief before dangling it over a vat of bubbling acid in the hopes that it would shut up. We loved "The Unicorn and the Wasp" though).

I'm really excited about Steven Moffat taking over -- always assuming that it's not just a publicity stunt on his part to try and get "Blink" a Hugo, as a countermeasure to Mr Cornell's car-crash-to-get-the-sympathy-vote.

And it was a terrific dinner: they do fantastic dry-fried green beans at Bar Shu (it doesn't sound like it would be fantastic from the menu, but it is).


Hi Neil!

I wanted to let you know about an experiment of mine and I think your fans might be interested in! You may have heard about 1000 Journals (www.1000journals.com), the traveling journal project where people around the world passed around journals and notebooks and drew/wrote about their thoughts about anything! Well they've continued the project at www.1001journals.com! I have started three notebooks that will (hopefully) eventually be filled by your fans around the world with drawings, poems, random thoughts, etc about your work. I was wondering if you could put a word out to people and let them know about this experiment so we can start sending them around to fans everywhere! They can create an account at www.1001journals.com and sign up for Journals #2932, 2933, 2934. It's currently capped at 10 people per journal but I can increase the signup capacity once the cap is reached! I think this would be super fun!

Thanks

Katherine

It's posted. Good luck.

Neil,

I was reading your blog about the Tasmanian tiger a bit ago and found it very interesting. Today, while perusing the BBC news site (I like seeing many sides of an issue) I found this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7408840.stm

I thought you would find it interesting.

Thanks,

Lily

I'm fascinated by this one. I really want to see a Thylacine in the flesh...

...

Renee French is posting a drawing a day at http://reneefrench.blogspot.com/


...



Why have I never posted this here?

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This just came in from my friend in Tasmania Dianna Graf (Clockwork Beehive is Dianna and Mark's company. Just in case you were wondering.)

Ooh.

I just got a message saying that tickets to your event in Hobart have completely sold out.

That was fast!

Could you perhaps mention this on your blog?

So many more people were planning to come. There are people flying in from other states and everything.

If enough people who missed out on tickets contact Ellison Hawker Bookshop quickly enough, they may be able to find you a bigger venue.

xx

Dianna

Consider it posted. I'd hate for someone to have go all the way to Tasmania for nothing (although if you did, you'd still be in Tasmania, which is pretty cool by itself. There's the museum, not to mention the extremely slim chance of seeing a thylacine...)

...

I normally avoid linking to favourite author surveys because it could skew them, but I don't think anything will affect the Tolkien and Pratchett lead over at SFX, and the results, as a snapshot of what people read and like, are fascinating.

http://www.sfx.co.uk/page/sfx?entry=vote_for_your_favourite_sf

...

When I read this book review's headline -- Nick Johnstone's Amy Amy Amy is the first assessment of the troubled rise of a remarkable talent, says Nick Johnstone I thought that The Guardian had taken book reviewing into new places by allowing the author (of an Amy Winehouse bio) to review his book himself, so lines like

He is scrupulous about acknowledging his sources as he goes along in the text, which contributes to an impression of the book being a compendium of other people's cuttings, rather than the product of his own legwork.

were as much confessional as they were descriptive. (I can't imagine I would have been as honest about my Duran Duran biography-from-cuttings.) I was enormously impressed with this new trend in reviewing, and really disappointed when I got to the bottom of the review and read "David Sinclair is the author of Wannabe: The Spice Girls Revisited (Omnibus)" and realised it was just another Guardian typo.
...

A few weeks ago I was interviewed about the Ramayana by animator and film-maker Ravi Swami for the British Library. It's up as a podcast now on their site as part of the upcoming Ramayana exhibit:

http://www.bl.uk/ramayana

I can't wait to see the exhibition.
....

And, for those of you who were wondering, there's a little film of a thylacine on YouTube. Possibly the last thylacine, filmed in 1933. Look at that jaw open...

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