BRUCE MOUNSTERFebruary 25, 2009 08:48am
THE Tasmanian tiger is extinct and it is staying that way, says an expert in ancient DNA.
Jeremy Austin, raised in Hobart and now working at the University of Adelaide's Centre for Ancient DNA, was in Launceston yesterday delivering some less-than-encouraging news for those hoping to see a live thylacine.
His lab -- which deals with fragments of old hard-to-interpret DNA -- has been examining dozens of animal droppings collected and stored since the 1930s by people who hoped they might be from a thylacine.
Dr Austin said most of those scats were identified as Tasmanian devil, with a couple yet to be positively identified, but something other than a thylacine.
It means the lab's efforts to find positive evidence of the thylacine's existence since the last known specimen died in 1936 have been so far unsuccessful -- and it suggests the thylacine is firmly extinct.
Dr Austin said he had further bad news for those hoping a thylacine could be brought back to life through cloning.
He said ancient DNA -- collected from old animal bones, scats or sediments containing shed skin or hair -- was so jumbled up it would be like rebuilding a car with only 80 per cent of the parts.
Dr Austin said in the unlikely event scientists found a complete genome, and cloned it successfully, they would only have one animal, which couldn't reproduce.
He also believed it immoral to spend years and millions of dollars on bringing one animal back to life, when hundreds of existing species needed saving from extinction.
Dr Austin said among them was the Tasmanian devil, in a tenuous situation as a result of its ultra low immune gene diversity.
It means the devil's weak immune system can't recognise cancerous tumours and remove them from its body.
The lab is gathering ancient DNA from long dead Tasmanian devils to test an idea that the population had decreased to a handful of individuals some time in the past, which would explain such a lack of diversity.
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