Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger)

extinct · marsupial · Australia · predator

Striped like a tiger. The thylacine had reddish-brown fur with dark stripes on its back, which is why people called it the Tasmanian tiger, even though it was not actually a tiger at all.

A marsupial hunter. Unlike most marsupials that eat plants or insects, the thylacine was a carnivore that hunted other animals, making it unique among Australian marsupials.

Vanished from most places. Thylacines lived on mainland Australia and New Guinea thousands of years ago, but eventually disappeared from those areas, possibly after wild dogs called dingoes arrived.

Hunted by farmers. When European settlers came to Australia, they blamed thylacines for killing sheep and chickens, so they offered money (called bounties) to hunters to kill them.

Last one died alone. The very last thylacine on Earth died in a zoo in Hobart, Tasmania in 1936, making it one of the most recent animals humans hunted to extinction.