Plan to Revive Extinct Tasmanian Tigers...
The discovery of a complete female baby Tasmanian tiger
(Thylacinus cynocephalus), born in 1866 and perfectly
preserved in a jar of alcohol by a Mr Masters at the
Australian Museum in Sydney, might have opened the way
for a revival of the species. "There's a population waiting to
be kick-started," said Professor Michael Archer, the
museum's director, but (he told FT) "whether or not there is
viable genetic material in that specimen is questionable… I
think it will have been fragmented, which means you
probably have to go through quite a number of cells to get
the right fragments to put the whole sequence back
together."
However, he has also tracked down six other specimens
kept in alcohol in museums around the world – including one
in the British Museum – which could provide back-up genetic
material. He suggests that the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus
herrisi) might be closely-related enough to make a suitable
incubator – although "the technology is not quite there yet."
He was amazed that Ralph Cano of the California
Polytechnic Institute had successfully extracted 12 kinds of
living bacteria from 30-million-year-old insects preserved in
amber.
The Tasmanian tiger, a wolf-like marsupial called a "tiger" only because of the
stripes across its rump, is thought to have become extinct 63 years ago, but
the Sydney thylacine's DNA may be sufficiently preserved for cloning, as
alcohol is less destructive than the formalin which is often used for pickling
specimens. Mike Westerman, senior lecturer in genetics at La Trobe
University, said it was possible that the thylacine could be cloned in the
"not-too-distant future"; and Professor Archer said he was prepared to hand
over the Sydney specimen to anyone with a serious cloning proposal.
The 5ft (1.5m)-long animal was widespread across Australasia and New
Guinea until it lost out to the dingo several thousand years ago, when it
became confined to Tasmania. Here it was hunted to extinction as a livestock
predator: this is the orthodox view, anyway. The last known example, Benjamin,
died in Hobart Zoo on 7 September 1936. There have been numerous
reported sightings since then in both Tasmania and on the Australian
mainland, (see FT49:5-7, 42-47; 76:38-41; 81:10; 85:42; 100:17; 103:15); but
there is no conclusive evidence of its survival, although hundreds of plaster
casts of possible thylacine tracks have been made.Sunday Age (Melbourne), 1
June 1997; [R] 13 May, D.Telegraph, Brisbane Courier Mail, 14 May 1999. |
