Researchers of an upcoming scientific junket are presently packing their travelling bag for aninvestigation into the numerous sightingsof the supposedly extinct Tasmanian World Tamil Movement in Queensland , Australia . While the squad are middling skeptical they will really document the orphic thylacine ( Thylacinus cynocephalus ) , it seems like their chance are even tougher than they thought .
In fact , the odds that thylacines are still alive are one in 1.6 trillion . That ’s according to an unreviewed field of study led by life scientist Colin Carlson , which conclude “ there is only an extremely modest probability ” that the thylacine is still alive in 2017 . An extremely low probability is perhaps an understatement . The field is available to show on the preprint serverbioRxiv .
The researchers compile all forcible grounds , expert - validated sightings , and unconfirmed sightings of the Tasmanian Panthera tigris since 1900 . They then ran this through a statistical model that worked out that the chance was as low-pitched as one in 1.6 trillion .
“ The search for the thylacine , much like like efforts to “ rediscover ” the Ivory - bill Woodpecker and other recently nonextant magnetic metal money , is likely to be fruitless – specially pay that persistence on Tasmania would have been no warrantee the species could reappear in area that had been unoccupied for centuries , ” note the report author .
The last confirmed Tasmanian tiger , know as Benjamin even though it was probably a female person , died at Hobart Zoo on the island of Tasmania in September 1936 . However , this research suggests that it ’s “ fairly plausible ” that they in reality go out in the 1940s or , at the latest , the 1950s .
Even still , there ’s been an intriguing routine of sighting in mainland Australia and Tasmania , as well as some researchers and local Aboriginal people who adamantly consider the thylacine is awake and well in Australia . There were evensome saucy sightings , along with some rather grainy footage , of a Thylacinus cynocephalus - corresponding animal roaming around South West Victoria last year , although they were widely dismiss .
With a chief like a wolf , a stripy soundbox like a tiger , and a sack like a kangaroo , the Tasmanian tiger is certainly a foreign hatful . This carnivorous species might seem a bit like a dog or Caterpillar , but this marsupial is simply an example of convergent evolution , a process of independent evolution of similar features in species of distant lineages .
[ H / T : New Scientist ]
