Three new old species Tasmanian tigers were discovered in Australia. Now extinctThese newly discovered marsupials include one with a jawbone that could crush the bones and teeth of its prey, a major carnivore and the closest known relative of the last Tasmanian tiger species. The findings are detailed in a study published on September 6 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology and coincides with the 88th anniversary of the death of one of the last known Tasmanian tigers.
Reptiles and marsupials fight for dominance
Tasmanian tigers are a group extinct marsupials called Possums that roamed New Guinea, mainland Australia and Tasmania during the late Oligocene some 23 to 25 million years ago. They were about the size of a dog and are known for their striking stripes and sharp claws.
According to the team behind this new study, these newly described species are the oldest members of the Thylacine family that scientists have found.
(Related: A genetics startup aims to save the Tasmanian tiger from extinction.)
“The once-proposed idea that Australia was dominated by reptilian carnivores during these 25 million year intervals is steadily being dismantled as the fossil record of marsupial carnivores, such as this new thylacine, grows with each new discovery,” Timothy Churchilla co-author of the study and PhD student at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Vertebrate Palaeontology Lab, said in a statement emailed to Popular science.
The new species were found in the fossil-rich Riversleigh World Heritage Area in Queensland, where numerous fossils of turtles, fish, snails, crocodiles, lizards, pythons, birds and several species of mammals have been found.
“The diversity of mammalian carnivores at Riversleigh during this period rivals that of any other ecosystem, including the major radiation of mammalian carnivores that evolved in South America,” Churchill said.
Tasmanian Jaws?
Badjcinus timfaulkneri is the largest of these news typesIt weighed between 15 and 24 pounds, about the size of a large tasmanian devil. B. timfaulkneri had an extremely thick jaw which allowed him to eats the teeth and bones of its prey–also like the living Tasmanian devil.
This species is related to the much smaller, approximately 2.7 kilo previously discovered Badjcinus turnbulliUntil now, this smaller species was the only other undisputed thylacinid known from the late Oligocene. The team found a lower jawbone and an isolated first molar from B. timfaulkneri in the Hiatus Site, a fossil deposit in the park that is even older than the wider Riversleigh’s White Hunter Site where B. turnbulli was previously found.
A close relative
The second new species is Nimbacinus peterbridgei. Roads in on about eight poundsit was about the size of a Maltese terrier. Scientists found a almost complete lower jaw bone of these species on the White Hunter Site.
This species was a predator that probably focused on small mammals and other diverse prey species in ancient forests. Species Nimbacinus also appear to be more closely related to the Tasmanian tiger than other marsupial wolves of this era. Nimbacinus peterbridgei is probably the oldest direct ancestor of the Tasmanian tiger currently known to science.
Large carnivore
Ngamalacinus nigelmarveni weighed about 11 pounds or the size of a red fox. The blades of its lower molars are long with deep “meat cutting” notches suggesting that it was probably highly carnivorous. The team suspects that it was probably more carnivorous than other thylacinids of a similar size.
Australia’s National Threatened Species Day
Australia’s annual National Endangered Species Day is on September 7The somber day is dedicated to more than 2,000 plant and animal species that are currently considered “endangered.” It also commemorates the death of Benjamin, one of the last known Tasmanian tigers on September 7, 1936.
Tasmanian tigers first disappeared from the Australian mainland about 2,000 years ago. National Australia Museum speculates that overhunting and the introduction of the dingo led to the first wave of extinction of the Tasmanian tiger.
(Related: The remains of the last Tasmanian tiger have finally been found – in a cupboard.)
Europeans began colonizing the island of Tasmania, about 150 miles south of Australia, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Colonists wrongly blamed the marsupials for killing chickens and sheep, and possums were slaughtered by the thousands. Benjamin a Thylacine– died 88 years ago in captivity at Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania. That last remaining line ultimately survived for more than 25 million years until it ended in the 1930s.
In December 2022Researchers from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart found the remains of the last known Tasmanian tiger in a museum cabinet. The remains belonged to an older female that had been captured by a trapper from the Florentine Valley and sold to Beaumaris Zoo before it died, sometime after BenjaminThe specimen’s skeleton and skin were then stored away in the museum’s closet, due to the “somewhat shady” takeover and the experts lost track.