Tasmanian wolf

Carnivorous marsupial Thylacinus cynocephalus, in the family Dasyuridae. It is doglike in appearance with a long tail, characteristic dark stripes on back and hindquarters, and measures nearly 2 m/6 ft from nose to tail tip. It was hunted to probable extinction in the 1930s, the last known Tasmanian wolf dying in Hobart Zoo, Tasmania, in 1936, but there are still occasional unconfirmed reports of sightings, both on the Australian mainland and in the Tasmanian mountains, its last known habitat.

A team of scientists at the Australian Museum, Sydney, has extracted DNA from a preserved Tasmanian wolf pup as the first stage in an attempt to recreate the extinct marsupial. The leader of the project and head of evolutionary biology at the Australian Museum, Dr Don Colgan, gave the project, at its outset in 2000, only an 8–10% chance of success. It would be the first cloning of an animal from dead DNA.