#thylacinidae

[joeycbang]

tattoo-esque thylacine

[printondemandart]

The Thylacine by Joseph Wolf Postcard

Animal Illustration: Designs & Collections on Zazzle

[all-mammal-creechur]

Thylacine Thylacinus cynocephalus

Also called Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf, a carnivorous marsupial that once ranged across New Guinea and Australia, until the introduction of dingoes about 8,000 years ago left only populations on the island of Tasmania. Killings by Europeans led to the last known thylacine dying in 1936. There have been continued unconfirmed sightings up to the present time.

img source

[podartists]

The Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) | Joseph Wolf | Zoological sketches v.1 (1861) | Biodiversity Heritage Library | Flickr | Public domain

[drawing-with-beasts]

Drought not dingos behind mainland Australia tiger extinction: study

The mystery loss of Tasmanian tigers from mainland Australia was likely caused by climate change and not wild dogs or hunting by Aborigines, scientists said Thursday.

New research suggests that mainland thylacines may have declined due to climate change.

[drawing-with-beasts]

Benjamin was probably not the last thylacine, says study

It's the 80th anniversary of the death of the last known thylacine. But Benjamin's relatives likely lived on longer, say scientists.

Benjamin, the last known captive thylacine, died at Hobart Zoo in 1936 and is thought to have been the last of his kind. Scientists now report, however, that wild thylacines likely survived well into the 1940s and perhaps beyond.

[thylacine-dreams]

Thylacinus yorkellus, holotype, incomplete left dentary.

“Thylacinus yorkellus is described as a new, moderately small-bodied species of thylacinid from the latest Miocene or, more likely, earliest Pliocene of South Australia. ... It is found by cladistic analysis to be the sister species of the recently extinct Th. cynocephalus and distinct from the approximately coeval Th. megiriani from the Northern Territory. ... Each of the three known late Miocene to early Pliocene Thylacinus species (Th. potens, Th. megiriani and Th. yorkellus) suggest that, instead of declining, there was a modest radiation of Thylacinus in the late Miocene.” [x]

This specimen was found in Corra-Lynn Cave, south of Curramulka, York Peninsula, South Australia. It was initially described in 1992, but its species was not formally named until recently. The dental morphology is distinct from other Thylacinidae, enabling its classification as a new species.

Based on measurements taken from the holotype specimen, the adult body mass of Thylacinus yorkellus would have been 16-18 kg (compared to 20-30 kg for Thylacinus cynocephalus).

This specimen is held at the South Australian Museum in Adelaide.

[thylacine-dreams]

A somewhat derpy reconstruction of Thylacinus potens at the Australian Museum in Sydney. [x, x]