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The images of the last known Tasmanian tiger, which died at Hobart Zoo in Tasmania in 1936, are world famous. The black and white photos show an elegant, rather slender animal with a striped pattern. This supposed or actual last specimen died just two months after the species was protected by law. So far, researchers consider it unlikely that the animal species survived long after in their homeland – the forests of the Australian island of Tasmania. The International Union for Conservation of Nature declared the animals extinct in 1982, followed by the Tasmanian government in 1986.

A combination of factors led to this happening at all, all of which can be traced back to the arrival of Europeans in Australia in the 18th century. Because the new settlers cleared forests, brought in diseases and soon began a relentless hunt for the thylacine, as the Tasmanian tiger is also known.

As carnivores, the animals were suspected of preying on livestock. Therefore, in 1888 the Tasmanian government introduced a premium of one pound per thylacine caught. The approximately 5000 animals that probably still lived on Tasmania at the time of European settlement were rapidly decimated in this way. So far, the Tasmanian tiger – like the dodo or the passenger pigeon – has been considered a symbol of the extinction of species caused by humans.

But again and again there are more or less credible reports of sightings. Whether the Tasmanian tiger actually went extinct in the 1930s or at least in the decades that followed is always a source of material for newspaper reports.

The news from Melbourne also caused a stir in Australia. Researchers from the university there, together with US colleagues from the Texan company Colossal Biosciences, are trying to bring the Tasmanian tiger back to life. The process aims to take stem cells from a living marsupial species with similar DNA – the narrow-footed marsupial mouse. The team then hopes to reconstruct the thylacine using stem cells and gene-editing technology called gene scissors. The new project is possible thanks to a multi-million dollar donation.

The team is optimistic, having already sequenced the genome of a juvenile specimen held by Museums Victoria. The result is, as Andrew Pask, who leads the research at the University of Melbourne, told the British Guardian, “a complete plan for building a thylacine”. “I believe that in ten years we could have our first live baby thylacine,” the researcher is quoted as saying in a press release. According to the team, the ultimate goal is to resettle the thylacine back to Tasmania at some point. However, several other experts have reacted with skepticism to the Melbourne announcement, calling a “rebirth” of the animals “science fiction”. Bringing extinct animals back to life is “a fairytale science,” Jeremy Austin of the Australian Center for Ancient DNA told the Sydney Morning Herald. In his opinion, the project is “more about getting media attention for the scientists and less about doing serious science”.

Corey Bradshaw, an ecologist at Flinders University in South Australia, also thinks the project is unlikely to be successful. Even if it were possible to resuscitate the animals in the lab — even that he doubts — he doesn’t think the scientists would be able to breed thousands of specimens with enough genetic variation. However, the latter would be necessary to create a healthy population of thylacines, he said in an interview with the Guardian.

In fact, science has so far failed to “bring back” extinct animals. Similar attempts to revive the woolly mammoth have so far been unsuccessful. In the case of the Tasmanian tiger, too, experiments have been unsuccessful over the past 20 years. The Australian Museum attempted to clone the animals. The project was discontinued in 2005.