These creatures were very shy and avoided humans so were not dangerous to us. Their extinction was due to hunting by humans as well as competition with other small predators such as dingos.

Known officially to science as a thylacine, the large marsupial predators, which looked more like wild dogs than tigers and ranged across Tasmania and the Australia mainland, were declared extinct in 1936. …

Aggressive encounters between thylacines are rare, but did occasionally occur.

Australia’s iconic thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, was hunted to death in the early Twentieth century for allegedly killing sheep; however, a new study published in the Zoological Society of London’s Journal of Zoology has found that the tiger had such weak jaws that its prey was probably no larger than a possum.

While it has been more recently acknowledged that that was an exaggeration, she says thylacines may not have even been capable of killing and eating sheep. “We actually found that thylacines have really weak jaws,” says Attard. Instead, Attard believes thylacines ate small animals such as bandicoots and possums.

While it is estimated there were around 5000 thylacines in Tasmania at the time of European settlement. However, excessive hunting, combined with factors such as habitat destruction and introduced disease, led to the rapid extinction of the species.

But if a species has gone extinct recently, there is a chance it could be returned to its original ecosystem. The Tasmanian tiger is thought to have gone extinct 80 years ago, but in that time, its native woodland has stayed more or less the same – this de-extinct species could potentially ‘go home’.

The Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus: dog-headed pouched-dog) is a large carnivorous marsupial now believed to be extinct. It was the only member of the family Thylacinidae to survive into modern times. It is also known as the Tasmanian Tiger or Tasmanian Wolf.