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Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 46: Jul-Aug 1986 |
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Tigers in western australia?
The title of course refers to the Tasmanian tiger or wolf or thylacine. We reported above on the possibility of a small relict population of Tasmanian tigers in Tasmania, where the supposedly last specimen expired in a Hobart zoo in 1936. There is now good evidence that the thylacine also roams Western Australian, where it has been believed extinct for thousands of years! At hand are photographs, casts of footprints, a carcass that may be very recent, and many eye-witness reports.
Much of the recent evidence has been gathered by Kevin Cameron, a first-rate bushman with two superbly trained dogs. A.M. Douglas, the author of this article and formerly Senior Experimental Officer at the Wetern Australian Museum in Perth was skeptical about living thylacines at first but is now a firm believer. He states, "I think Kevin Cameron has made the single most important wildlife discovery of this century."
(Douglas, Athol M.; "Tigers in Western Australia?" New Scientist, p. 44, April 24, 1986.)