Thylacine (28 page)

NOTES

Chapter 1

1
.
Journal of Discovery by me, Abel Jans Tasman, of a Voyage from Batavia
for making discoveries of the Unknown South Land, 1642
, translated into English in J. Burney,
A Chronological History of the Voyages and
Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean, Part III, from the Year
1620, to the Year 1688
, London, Luke Hansard & Sons, 1813.

2
. Saint-Hilaire had extensive knowledge of marsupials: in 1804 he took personal charge of the 40 000 preserved floral and faunal specimens brought back to France aboard the corvette
Geographe
from Baudin's epic voyage. He was on firm ground therefore when, in 1810, he showed that South America's marsupials were very different to the ‘tyger'. He placed it in the entirely new sub-order Dasyuromorphia, representing carnivorous marsupials, from which derives the more common
dasyurus
(= shaggy tail; anglicised to dasyurid). Because this was a Greek-root term the Latin of the earlier classification had to change as well, and the animal became
Dasyurus cynocephalus
.

In 1824 Coenraad Jacob Temminck refined the animal's classification further by differentiating it from the dasyurid family of quolls, dunnarts, antechinuses, planigales, ningauis and Tasmanian devils. It now belonged in its own unique Thylacinidae family (Greek
thylakos
= leather pouch). The third family in this group is the numbat. The fourth classified carnivorous marsupial, the blind marsupial mole, shares dasyurid, possum, kangaroo
and
placental mammal characteristics and, not surprisingly, is classified in its own sub-order. Although widespread in Australia's arid regions, and an excellent under-sand ‘swimmer', not much is known about it.

An adjustment was made to Temminck's otherwise logical classification
Thylacinus cynocephalus
: his addition of the minor name
harrisii
was rejected. (The Tasmanian devil, the thylacine's closest relative, is
Sarcophilus harrisii.)

3
. Evans, George William,
Geographical, Historical and Topographical
Description of Van Diemen's Land, with Important Hints to Emigrants
, London, John Souter, 1822, pp. 56–7.

4
. Paddle, Robert,
The Last Tasmanian Tiger: The History and Extinction
of the Thylacine
, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 7.

5
. Troughton, Ellis,
Furred Animals of Australia
, Sydney, Angus &Robertson, 1941, 6th edn 1957, pp. 50 and 52.

6
. Morris, Desmond,
Animalwatching
, London, Jonathan Cape, 1990, p. 11.

7
. Alderton, David,
Foxes, Wolves and Wild Dogs of the World
, London, Blandford, 1994, p. 141.

8
. Penny, Malcolm, and Brett, Caroline,
Predators: Great Hunters of the
Natural World
, London, Ebury, 1995, p. 98.

9
. Hoser, Raymond T.,
Endangered Animals of Australia
, Mosman, NSW, Pierson, 1991, p. 196.

10
. Guiler, Eric,
Thylacine: The Tragedy of the Tasmanian Tiger
, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 39.

11
. ‘Towards the middle of the twentieth century, [the thylacine's] affinities again came into question. It had long been recognised as resembling a member of the wolf family but the similarities were clearly superficial and attributable to convergent evolution. However, it also bore a remarkable resemblence to the South American fossil marsupial
Borhyaena
and strong arguments were advanced for regarding the thylacine as the sole Australian member of the Borhyaenidae. If this hypothesis had been correct, it would have had far-reaching implications regarding the origin of the Australian marsupials but recent intensive research has failed to provide evidence in favour of the South American relationship and has reinforced the location of the Thylacinidae in the Dasyuroidea. One of the most interesting researches involved the extraction of albumin from a piece of untanned skin of a thylacine and a serological comparison of this with albumins from diverse living marsupials. Results indicated only a very distant relationship of the thylacine to South American marsupials and a very close affinity with dasyurids. A further implication of these findings is that adaption to a running, predatory way of life has led
three
animal groups—Thylacinidae, Borhyaenidae and Canidae—to a similar functional solution
.
' (Rounsevell, D. E., in Ronald Strahan (ed.),
The Australian Museum
Complete Book of Australian Mammals
, Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1983, repr. with corrections 1988, p. 81.)

Chapter 2

1
.
www.thylacoleo.com/whatis
[accessed 10 July 2002]

2
. Amphibious fishes required more than a benign atmosphere to survive on land. A number of critical evolutionary developments had already taken place in water, including the mysterious development of bone—enabling locomotion as well as protecting internal organs and the central nervous system—and jaws. Interestingly, the jaw was much later to become the principal evolutionary feature demarcating the first true mammals. In some creatures it began to become fused directly to the skull, thereby freeing up two little hinge-bones that became part of the middle ear, greatly enhancing hearing. The thylacine's jaw can open about 75°. Its famously wide gape is a threat-yawn; a display common to marsupial carnivores.

3
. A much more widespread extinction 200 million years earlier marks the end of the Palaeozoic and the start of the Mesozoic. Here too, larger creatures, both terrestrial and aquatic, suffered most.

4
. Radiation refers to the evolutionary result of adaption and divergence. Thus, radiation by the mammal subclass
Marsupialia
has been tremendously successful and varied. To name some: dasyurids (quolls, dunnarts, planigales, devils, thylacines, numbats); perameloids (bandicoots, bilbies); vombatoids (koalas, wombats); phalangeroids (three possum families, cuscuses, gliders); macropods (potoroos, bettongs, kangaroos, wallabies, pademelons, quokkas). Kangaroos alone have radiated into about 60 species. At the other end of the scale the ancient monotremes display limited radiation, represented as they are by just two species of terrestrial echidna and the monospecific aquatic platypus.

5
. Rolls, Eric,
Australia: A Biography
, St Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 2000, p. 108.

6
. Convergent evolution occurs when unrelated animals adapt in similar ways to similar environments.

Chapter 3

1
. Wilson, Edward O.,
The Diversity of Life
, London Penguin, 1994, p. 34.

2
. In the biological sense of the term, mammalian adaption takes place across thousands of generations. It manifests as speciation, ‘the evolutionary process that throws off new species . . . As a species encounters fresh environments, brought about by factors such as climate change, it adapts, and so alters in different ways in different parts of its range. Eventually a new form becomes differentiated enough to rank as a new species. The parent form, if unable to fit in with changed circumstances, disappears, while the genetic material persists, diversified and enriched'. (Norman Myers,
The Sinking Ark
, Oxford, Pergamon, 1979, p. 27.)

3
. Ward, Peter,
End of Evolution: Dinosaurs, Mass Extinction and
Biodiversity
, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995, p. 252. Estimates of species extant at any time vary wildly, from 10 to 30 million. The only certainty is that insects comprise the vast majority, with millions of insect species becoming extinct before being known to science.

4
. The dingo,
Canis familiaris dingo
, belongs to an equatorial group of primitive dogs and is not the same as the domestic dog,
Canis
familiaris
, which for example breeds twice a year as opposed to the dingo's once. However they can, and do, interbreed.

5
. Strahan (ed.),
Complete Australian Mammals
, p. 478.

Chapter 4

1
. Guiler,
Thylacine
, p. 67.

2
. Paddle,
The Last Tasmanian Tiger
, p. 8.

3
.
The Tasmanian
, 11 July 1885.

4
. Rounsevell, cited in Strahan (ed.),
Complete Australian Mammals
, p. 82.

5
. Paddle,
The Last Tasmanian Tiger
, p. 44.

6
. Cited in Adam Smith, Patsy,
Tiger Country
, Sydney, Rigby Ltd, 1968, p. 55.

7
. Hoser,
Endangered Animals
, p. 196.

8
. Strahan (ed.),
Complete Australian Mammals
, p. 175. Why do kangaroos and wallabies hop? ‘There is no certain answer to the question but, inasmuch as this method of locomotion is found elsewhere among mammals only in small animals such as hopping-mice, it may be that the habit arose in small ancestors of the macropods and was retained because there was no great evolutionary pressure to revert to a more generally effective quadrupedal gait.' The writer does go on to say that, at speed, the bipedal gait is ‘marginally more efficient in energy expenditure' than the other. It should be remembered that bipedalism also makes an animal taller—an argument used to explain why humans stood up—to keep watch for predators over long grass.

9
.
Launceston Examiner
, 22 March 1899.

10
. Mont Turner, cited in Adam Smith, Patsy, op. cit. p. 55.

11
. Interview with the author, 14 August 2002.

12
. Interview with the author, 14 August 2002. The Laird article appeared in
The Mercury
, 7 October 1968.

13
. Guiler,
Thylacine
, p. 77.

14
. van Lawick-Goodall, Hugo and Jane,
Innocent Killers
, London, Collins, 1970, pp. 61–2.

15
. It seems that there has always been a broader argument in the Australian scientific community as to whether marsupial mammals are at a less developed evolutionary stage than the continent's placental mammals. If so, it illogically renders them biologically inferior: a decree apparently handed down to the colonials by nineteenth-century British scientists and not subsequently challenged to any vigorous degree. One implication of this hierarchical ranking would have been a preparedness to accept their extermination, through being a badly adapted, primitive vermin species.

16
. Sharland, Michael,
Tasmanian Wild Life: A Popular Account of the
Furred Land Mammals, Snakes and Introduced Mammals of Tasmania
, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1962, p. 2.

17
. Guiler, Eric, and Godard, Philippe,
Tasmanian Tiger: A Lesson to be
Learnt
, Perth, Abrolhos Publishing, 1998, pp. 183 and 206. Guiler has numerous photographs of animals believed to be thylacine kills. One is a small wallaby found in 1976: ‘The throat, neck and upper chest have been ripped out but the remainder of the body is untouched. There has been no chewing or biting on any other part of the carcass'. Another is a sheep found in 1987: ‘The carcass was undamaged except that the top of the skull was removed with the skin turned back as far as the neck. The brain had been eaten and there was no blood on or near the carcass'.

18
. Guiler, Eric,
The Tasmanian Tiger in Pictures
, Hobart, St David's Park Publishing, 1991, p. 14.

19
. Adam Smith, Patsy, op cit., p. 57.

20
. Gunn, Ronald, quoted in Paddle,
The Last Tasmanian Tiger
, p. 71, from
Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Van Diemen's Land
, 2, pp. 156–7.

21
. Bailey, Col,
Tiger Tales: Stories of the Tasmanian Tiger
, Sydney, HarperCollins, 2001, p. 69.

Chapter 5

1
. Risdon Cove is of particular significance to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community. In May 1804 the members of a kangaroo hunting party of the Moomairemener tribe were attacked there by a small group of British soldiers, with an unknown number shot dead.

2
. Giblin, R. W.,
The Early History of Tasmania: the Geographical Era
1642–1804
, London, Methuen, 1928, p. 266. Whereas the streets of Hobart today are soberly named after its military and civic founders, Knopwood's Retreat is, appropriately, the city's most famous pub, in the heart of historic Salamanca Place.

3
. Quoted in Evans,
Description of Van Diemen's Land
, p. 3.

4
. Robson, Lloyd,
A History of Tasmania
, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 46.

5
. ibid. p. 70.

Chapter 6

1
. ‘In the beginning was the Dreamtime and all things took their shape in the Dreaming. Trowenna, the heart-shaped island we call Tasmania, was very small, just a tiny sand-bank in the southern seas . . .'. So begins a legend of the creation of the island, one of a number told to the Quaker Joseph Cotton in the 1830s by Timler, an Aboriginal ‘high priest'. Cotton's great-grandson adapted them from their original diary form. (
Touch the Morning: Tasmanian Native
Legends
, by Jackson Cotton, Hobart, OBM Pty Ltd, 1979, p. 6.)

2
. Scale fish disappear completely from the archaeological record. Commenting on the phenomenon, Greg Lehman, Assistant Director of the Riawunna Centre for Aboriginal Education at the University of Tasmania, suggests that:

This is most likely a result of changing climatic conditions at the time, which resulted in an increased abundance of shellfish and crustaceans. A diet of sedentary animals like these is much less labour-intensive and less subject to chance than fishing. Also, the reliance on woven box-traps (which Tasmanian Aborigines used at Rocky Cape) imposed a size limitation on the catch—in both individual size and quantity. With such a change in environmental factors, I would argue that there was a cultural ‘potential' created which soon came to be explained in metaphoric/ mythological terms. My feeling is that, three millennia later, this cultural event was manifest as something that was interpreted by Europeans as a ‘taboo'. (Correspondence with the author, 20 December 2002.)