The thylacine looked enough like a wolf that people assumed it hunted like one. British colonizers blamed it for killing sheep, and that belief helped drive the already rare species to extinction within 130 years, even though there was little evidence that it actually harmed the livestock economy.
Nearly 90 years after the last known thylacine died in 1936, researchers are using its skull to reconstruct the way it may have hunted. A study published in Nature Communications finds that the predator’s jaws were poorly suited to gripping large, struggling animals. Instead, its disproportionately large skull and long, narrow snout may have helped it deliver fast snapping bites aimed at smaller, agile prey.
“Our latest findings on their feeding adaptations counter the myths that drove the thylacine to extinction,” said study lead Vera Weisbecker in a press release.
The Tasmanian Tiger Skull Had No Living Match
Popularly called both the Tasmanian tiger and Tasmanian wolf, the thylacine was the largest meat-eating marsupial of modern times. Despite its dog-like appearance, it belonged to a very different branch of the mammal family tree and shared a more recent ancestor with kangaroos than with dogs.
Its extinction also ended a lineage that stretched back more than 30 million years.
Its dog-like resemblance made the thylacine a textbook example of convergent evolution, in which distantly related animals independently develop similar traits. Even its scientific name, Thylacinus cynocephalus, means “dog-headed.”
Explore All OptionsThe researchers analyzed 381 landmarks across a data set of 225 skull specimens representing 60 mammal species. The front of the thylacine’s skull most closely resembled those of foxes and jackals, while the back shared traits with larger canids and other marsupials. No living mammalian predator had the same combination.
An average thylacine weighed about 37 pounds (17 kilograms), yet its skull was comparable in size to those of predators weighing 54 to 147 pounds (24.5 to 66.7 kilograms), including gray wolves, African wild dogs, pumas, and leopards.
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How the Thylacine May Have Hunted
The skull’s shape also helps explain how it may have brought down prey. Its long jaws could close quickly, but its narrow snout would have made it harder to maintain a grip on an animal that twisted or pulled away.
That makes large prey such as sheep an unlikely specialty. Instead, the researchers think thylacines may have targeted smaller animals such as bandicoots with rapid bites. Its large skull may have added power to those strikes, while reinforced areas around the canine teeth helped withstand their force.
Rethinking What We Know About the Thylacine
Digital reconstruction of a CT-scanned thylacine skull with the canines colored pink.
(Image Credit: Vera Weisbecker (Flinders), CC-BY-SA)
Earlier genetic research found that thylacines and wolves shared similarities in genes that help shape the skull. But despite ending up with remarkably similar-looking heads, the two predators appear to have used them in very different ways. Researchers are now trying to understand how animals separated by more than 120 million years of evolution came to look so much alike while hunting so differently.
The study also acknowledges that many of the museum specimens used to understand the thylacine were collected without the consent or involvement of Indigenous communities. The researchers say future work should involve Palawa and other communities connected to the animal.
“Thylacines were hunted because of myths that they were ferocious predators of livestock, when there was little evidence for this. Their extinction is a story of ignorance and lack of respect for Australia’s unique wildlife and its Indigenous custodians,” Weisbecker said.
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Article Sources
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- This article references information from a study published in Nature Communications: Skull morphology of the extinct Tasmanian tiger suggests unique biting style
