Thylacine

The thylacine, Thylacinus cynocephalus, is a now-extinct carnivorous marsupial from Australia and Pacific islands.

It is commonly know as the Tasmanian Tiger or Tasmanian Wolf. I always thought that the formal name sounded like a chemical. It's obviously Greek, but a few Google stabs did not lead me to figure out where the name came from.


Thylacines drew my attention in part because they are an easily recognizable case of convergent evolution - thylacines became top-level predators, and their body plan paralleled that of dogs or wolves. Even though the marsupials branched off from the other mammals long before there were dogs or wolves.

They were a really beautiful animal, with their distinctive hindquarter stripes.

So it was a thrill to me to learn that there is video, from 1933, of one of the last of these creatures.

Less than a minute.
Remember, you're looking at what you might as well call a possum.

Links:

Found via GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life at ScienceBlogs.

The Thylacine entry at Wikipedia is excellent.

There's a nice interactive cladogram of mammals here.