Lost remains of last Tasmanian tiger found in museum cupboard after 85 years

The last thylacine was captured by a trapper and sold to the zoo

The thylacine was largely extinct on the Australian mainland by around 2,000 years ago, but it survived in Tasmania. However, being an apex predator didn't help.

European settlers in the 1800s blamed the animal for livestock losses and hunted the animal, driving it extinct.

It turns out the last thylacine was an old female animal captured by trapper Elias Churchill from the Florentine Valley and sold to the zoo in the middle of May 1936. "The sale was not recorded or publicized by the zoo because, at the time, ground-based snaring was illegal, and Churchill could have been fined. The thylacine only lived for a few months, and when it died, its body was transferred to TMAG," Paddle said in a statement.

"For years, many museum curators and researchers searched for its remains without success, as no thylacine material dating from 1936 had been recorded in the zoological collection, and so it was assumed its body had been discarded," he said.

Thanks to the discovery of an unpublished museum taxidermist's report dated 1936/37 that mentioned thylacine among the list of specimens worked on during the year, a fresh review of the entire Tasmanian tiger collection revealed the identity.

The remains will be on display in the museum's thylacine gallery

"The thylacine body had been skinned, and the disarticulated skeleton was positioned on a series of five cards to be included in the newly formed education collection overseen by museum science teacher Mr. A W G Powell," Medlock said.

"The arrangement of the skeleton on the cards allowed museum teachers to explain thylacine anatomy to students. The skin was carefully tanned as a flat skin by the museum’s taxidermist, William Cunningham, which meant it could be easily transported and used as a demonstration specimen for school classes learning about Tasmanian marsupials," she continued.

According to Mary Mulcahy, TMAG director, the last thylacine's tanned flat skin and disarticulated skeleton are on display in the museum's thylacine gallery.

"It is bittersweet that the mystery surrounding the remains of the last thylacine has been solved and that it has been discovered to be part of TMAG’s collection," Mulcahy said.