GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN (THYLACINE)

On Monday 7 September 1936 the last captive Thylacine died. All that remains of this magnificent animal is some grainy movie footage taken at Hobart Zoo of it roaming around in a chicken wire fence. There are no known photographs of a Thylacine alive in the wild. Isn't a pity that people won't be able to see this creatures amazing jaw, which could open to 120 degrees, the wolf like head, it's stiff, heavy kangaroo-like tail, or it's tiger-like stripes.
       A dramatic reduction in the number of Thylacines must have been obvious by the middle 1850s.  Even the famous naturalist John Gould, in his book The Mammals of Australia,1845-1863, predicted the end of the Thylacine when he wrote:
       When the comparatively small island of Tasmania becomes more densely populated, and it's primitive forests are intersected with roads from the eastern to the western coast, the numbers of this single animal will diminish, extermination will have it's full sway, and it will then, like the wolf in England and Scotland, be recorded as an animal of the past.

AN EXTRACT OF 30 AMAZING AUSTRALIAN ANIMALS, #28 GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN (THYLACINE).

WRITTEN BY CHRISTOPHER CHENG 

ILLUSTRATED BY GREGORY ROGERS