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Three new ancient species of Tasmanian tigers have been discovered in Australia. These newly discovered marsupials are now extinct, including one with a jawbone that could have allowed it to crush the bones and teeth of its prey, an important carnivore and the best known relative of the last Tasmanian tiger species. The findings are detailed in a study published 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 called a group of extinct marsupials Thylacines which roamed New Guinea, the Australian mainland and Tasmania about 23 to 25 million years ago during the late Oligocene. They went over the size of a dog and are known for their distinctive stripes and sharp claws.
According to the team behind this new study, these newly described species are the oldest members of the Thylacines family that scientists have found.
[Related: A genetics startup wants to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from extinction.]
“The once suggested idea that Australia was dominated by reptilian carnivores during these 25-million-year intervals is being steadily dismantled as the fossil record of marsupial carnivores, such as these new thylacinids, increases with each new discovery,” Timothy Churchilla co-author of the study and PhD student at the Vertebrate Palaeontology Lab at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), said in an emailed statement to Popular science.
The new species were found in fossil-rich areas Riversleigh World Heritage Area in Queensland, where numerous fossils of turtles, fish, snails, crocodiles, lizards, pythons, birds and several species of mammals have been uncovered.
“The diversity of mammalian carnivores at Riversleigh during this period is comparable to that of any other ecosystem, including the large radiation of mammalian carnivores that developed in South America,” says Churchill.
Tasmanian Jaws?
Badjcinus timfaulkneri is the largest of these news types. It weighed between 15 and 24 pounds, about the size of a great tasmanian devil. B. timfaulkneri had an extremely thick jawbone that would have made that possible eats the teeth and bones of its prey–also like the living Tasmanian devil.
This species is related to the much smaller one, about six pounds discovered earlier Badjcinus turnbulli. Until now, this smaller species was the only other undisputed thylacinid known from the late Oligocene. The team found a lower jawbone and isolated first molar B. timfaulkneri at 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 found earlier.
A close relative
The second new species is Nimbacinus peterbridgei. Weighing about eight poundsit was about the size of a Maltese terrier. Scientists found one almost complete lower jaw bone of these species at the White Hunter Site.
This species was a predator that likely focused on eating small mammals and other diverse prey species in old-growth forests. Species Nimbacinus also appear to be more closely related to the Tasmanian tiger than other thylacinids 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 the lower molars are long with deep notches for cutting meat suggesting it was probably highly carnivorous. The team suspects that it was probably more carnivorous than other thylacinids of similar size.
Australia’s National Endangered Species Day
Annual Australia National Endangered Species Day is September 7. The somber day is dedicated to more than 2,000 plant and animal species currently listed as ‘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. The Speculates the National Australia Museum that overhunting and the introduction of the dingo led to the first wave of the Tasmanian tiger’s extinction.
[Related: The last Tasmanian tiger’s remains were finally found—in a cupboard.]
Europeans began colonizing the island of Tasmania – an island 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 thylacines were slaughtered by the thousands. Benjamin a Thylacinus cynocephalus–died 88 years ago in captivity at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania. That last remaining lineage ultimately survived for more than 25 million years, until it came to an end in the 1930s.
In December 2022Researchers at 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 animal captured by a trapper from the Florentine Valley and sold to the Beaumaris Zoo. before it died some time after Benjamin. The skeleton and skin of the specimen were then put away in the museum’s closet due to the “somewhat shady” acquisition, after which the experts lost track of it.