Can The Thylacine Be Brought Back From The Dead? | Tom Gleeson's Secrets Of The Australian Museum

every specimen like these extinct little potteroos or rat kangaroos is filled with critical information about our world and the state of our environment the kinds of questions and puzzles are enormous if you want to understand what was this species what was it related to what did it eat where did it live why did it go extinct all those kinds of questions you need to get access to the specimen itself maybe we can study its DNA maybe we can study this chemistry of its skin and reconstruct what it ate those types of marvelous things that we can do with modern science so only by looking after these specimens in these cabinets we really kind of end that chaos and bring some order and organization to our understanding of life on Earth and it's never been more important Australia has the worst record of mammal Extinction on the planet [Music] with 50 animal species lost since the museum started collecting specimens in the 1860s none more famous than the one I'm dying to see the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger [Music] you've got more than one yeah we do and some of them are just absolute stunners so I always get a bit sad when I look into this cabinet reflecting on something that is no longer with us yeah it's sort of bittersweet because it's exciting because it's such a famous extinct animal in Australia and the world so it's exciting to see it but yeah it's also a bittersweet it's still not with us absolutely in September 1936 only two months after the species was granted protected status the last known individual died [Music] we always kind of look at the tag to tell the story and uh what year are we looking at there this one it says uh came to the museum August 14 1890. this is a specimen of a thylacine it's never been on display it's only ever been carefully curated outside of the light in a climate controlled area here behind the scenes in the museum okay and it shows that kind of Rich gray brown color and the the dark stripes uh just a much more richly colored animal than most people imagine these fairy remains could contain even more scientific insights [Music] but Chris is Keen for me to see a special specimen preserved in a very different way this is our famous little thylacine pup that is standing [Music] this would have to be the most famous specimen in the wet collection is that I think it might be it has kind of an iconic status it's this heartbreaking picture of a well-developed thylacine pup and it's preserved entirely intact stored wet in an alcohol solution scientists have access to the entire animal every part of its anatomy And even its genomic sequence so I have to ask you can you get DNA from this yeah you can get DNA because it was preserved in ethanol and not in formaldehyde or formalin like many of our other specimens it's actually a pretty good source of DNA now you probably get annoyed being asked this but could the thylacine be brought back to life a lot of people have that question it's really one of the main things people want to know about the thylacine and to me the answer is always going to be no and one of the reasons is that the thylacine is such a isolated type of mammal on the family tree you might think well maybe it's related to Tasmanian devils or quoles or other carnivorous marsupials it is but only very distantly in the same way that a dog is sort of related to a cat so very very very distant relative and without a close relative you're lacking basically almost all the tools you need as a biologist to ever have a chance of bringing this back and if you brought it back you could have a thought of saying plague to who it should be it should be annoying too many fallacies you bring them back and then this too they're everywhere yeah [Music]

Channel: ABC Science

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Keywords: tom gleeson's secrets of the australian museum, secrets of the australian museum, tom gleeson, australian museum, australian museum research institute, kris helgen, professor kris helgen, thylacine, tasmanian tiger, extinction, extinct, mammal extinction, australia extinction, australia fauna, fauna, thylacine clone, Catalyst, science, Australian science, ABC, ABC TV, ABC iview, research, education, learn, abc science, cloning, dna, genome, specimen preservation, ethanol, thylacine skin

Id: 2Sw_ksTBeiM

Length: 4min 55sec (295 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 24 2022