An exploration of the evidence surrounding the identity of the last captive Thylacine

Abstract

The last known captive Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) died at the Beaumaris Zoo on Hobart's Queen's Domain on the evening of Monday the 7th September 1936. However, within six months of its death the date of its capture was being inaccurately reported. Over the ensuing years there has been much debate and controversy relating to its source, sex, period of display, welfare, and more recently the fate of its remains. Whilst there has been some agreement, significant confusion has been created by the disparate, fragmentary, and often contradictory sources of evidence, with five distinctly exclusive provenances proposed for this specimen. For a species whose extinction was hastened by anthropogenic interventions, we have a moral obligation to preserve as much factual detail as possible about the Thylacine. To this end, the authors have undertaken a thorough review of the hypotheses advanced by Smith (1981) & Paddle (2000); Guiler (1986) & Bailey (2001); Sleightholme et al., 2020; Linnard et al., 2020 and Paddle & Medlock (2023), and have evaluated each against a synthesis of the evidence accrued over the previous 93 years to examine whether a definitive identification and history of the last known captive Thylacine can be determined. The authors found a sufficiently strong correlation between the evidence and the position advanced by Linnard et al., (2020) to maintain that the last captive Thylacine can be identified as the juvenile male captured at Penney's Flats on the Arthur River by 19 year old Roy and 59 year old Dan Delphin on the evening of Monday 7th July 1930.