Droppings may shed light on tigers mystery

Deborah Smith
February 26, 2009

COULD the Tasmanian tiger have survived beyond the 1930s? Dr Jeremy Austin, deputy director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide, is searching for evidence it did.

He has tested animal droppings, or skats, found in Tasmania in the 1950s and 1960s by a thylacine expert Eric Guiler, preserved at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
None have yet been found to contain any thylacine DNA. But other remains that post date the extinction of the marsupials could still be uncovered, Austin says.
"Something may turn up in an unlabelled box in a museum - a skat sample or hair sample."

Thylacines were common in Tasmania when Europeans arrived in the early 1800s. The last one killed in the wild was destroyed in 1918, and the last one in captivity died in 1936 in Hobart Zoo.

Austin and his colleagues have been testing DNA from the ancient remains of thylacines and Tasmanian devils found on the mainland to understand why they disappeared here.

The main theory is that the arrival of dingoes from the north 3500 years ago led to the demise of the two native carnivorous animals. "The dingo won out," Austin says.
Dingoes never reached Tasmania, which lends support to this idea. On the other hand, a decline in genetic diversity of the animals may have made them less able to adapt to climate chnage, and ancient DNA studies could help reveal if this was the case.

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