Scientists Seek To Save The Tasmanian Tiger, A Marsupial, From Extinction

The Tasmanian Tiger is in danger of extinction, but researchers in the US and Australia are working to save it. The last one, known as Thylacine, perished in the 1930s.

The bid's team claims that it can be replicated using stem cells and gene-editing technologies, and the first thylacine may be released back into the wild in ten years. Some specialists are skeptical and claim that de-extinction is a myth.

The thylacine's stripes along its back gave it the label "Tasmanian tiger," but it was actually a marsupial, an Australian mammal species that rears its young in a pouch.

It would be an incredible accomplishment for the researchers who tried it and would call for several technological advances. Since thylacines were driven to extinction about a century ago, Professor Andrew Pask, who is leading the research at the University of Melbourne, believes that "I now believe that in 10 years time we could have our first living baby thylacine since they were hunted to extinction close to a century ago," 

Tens of thousands of years ago, when people first arrived in Australia, the population of Tasmanian tigers decreased. This trend was later reversed when dingoes, a type of wild dog, were introduced. The marsupial was eventually hunted to extinction and only wandered freely on the island of Tasmania. At the Hobart Zoo, the final captive Tasmanian tiger passed away in 1936.