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GENOMICS

Thylacine tales
The genome of the extinct thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger, has been sequenced from a 109-year-
old museum specimen. The sequence resolves the phylogenetic placement of the species and reveals details of
convergent evolution between the thylacine and eutherian canines.

Ross Barnett and Eline Lorenzen

T
he history of the thylacine (Thylacinus closely related. In agreement with previous (insectivore carnivorans). The numbat, a
cynocephalus) is a stark warning analyses based on mitochondrial sequence small marsupial also known as the banded
from the recent past about how easily data4, the analysis placed the thylacine as the anteater, grouped as the sister lineage of
extinction occurs. This marsupial carnivore basal lineage in the order Dasyuromorphia the dasyurids, a monophyletic group
was found from Tasmania to New Guinea
during the Pleistocene epoch. When the a
human diaspora spread into Australasia
it disappeared first from Papua, then with
the arrival of the dingo during the mid-
Holocene it was quickly eradicated from
mainland Australia. The last bastion for
the species was Tasmania, isolated by the
formation of the Bass Strait towards the end
of the Pleistocene. But European settlers
blamed thylacines for killing their sheep,
and the local government and livestock
companies enacted attractive hunting
bounties on the animal. By 1909, when
the last bounty was taken1, the species was
on the edge of extinction and zoos paid
extravagant prices for live specimens. On
7 September 1936, the last thylacine —
nicknamed Benjamin (Fig. 1a) — died in
captivity, the same year that the species b
received full legal protection2.
Writing in Nature Ecology & Evolution,
Feigin et al.3 present the thylacine genome, Dasyuridae
sequenced at 42×​coverage using tissue
from a pouch pup specimen housed in
the collections of the Museum Victoria in
Melbourne. The authors use the genome to
investigate the evolutionary relationship, Numbat
Dasyuromorphia
demographic history and genomic Myrmecobius fasciatus
underpinnings of convergent evolution
between the thylacine and the eutherian
canines.
It is hardly surprising that an animal as
mysterious as the thylacine has so far eluded Thylacine
Thylacinus cynocephalus
a definitive placement in the mammalian
family tree using standard methods. To
resolve the phylogenetic position of the
species, Feigin et al. use the presence and
absence of retroposons in a comparative
genomic analysis. Retroposons are Peramelemorphia
jumping elements that have been reverse
transcribed from RNA and are inserted into
new genomic regions over evolutionary
timescales — if the same loci are found in Fig. 1 | Phylogenetic placement of the Tasmanian tiger. a, Benjamin, the last thylacine, in Hobart Zoo,
the same position in two species but not Tasmania. b, Feigin and colleagues’ genomic analysis3 places the thylacine as the basal lineage in the
in others, the likelihood is that they are Dasyuromorphia. Credit: a, The Natural History Museum/Alamy Stock Photo.

Nature Ecology & Evolution | VOL 2 | JANUARY 2018 | 7–8 | www.nature.com/natecolevol 7

© 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved.
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comprising the Tasmanian devil and its
associates (Fig. 1b)4.
The thylacine shows remarkable
morphological similarities with eutherian
canines and is a textbook example of
convergent evolution: the lineages are
among the deepest divergence within
mammals and share a common ancestor
as far back as 160 million years ago5.
To understand the genetic basis of this
convergence, Feigin and colleagues studied
orthologous genes across the thylacine and a
list of taxa that included five wild eutherian
canines and the dog. No genes or conserved
pathways associated with positive selection
were shared among thylacine and eutherian
canines, suggesting that protein coding
genes are not a major driver of convergent
evolution in these groups. The authors
propose instead that non-coding regulatory
elements may play a part.
Feigin et al. also present geometric
morphometrics of skulls to assess how
the convergence between thylacines and
eutherian carnivores has evolved. While
colloquially the thylacine has been described
as a marsupial wolf, tiger or hyena, this
geometric morphometric analysis of the
skull strongly places it alongside the canids,
especially the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and
8 Nature Ecology & Evolution | VOL 2 | JANUARY 2018 | 7–8 | www.nature.com/natecolevol
© 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved.
grey wolf (Canis lupus). These eutherian
generalist carnivores are thought to occupy
a similar ecological niche to the extinct
thylacine. Feigin and colleagues found that,
for their dataset, diet explained skull shape
variation irrespective of phylogeny and
that this has led to considerable evolution
in phylomorphospace for the thylacine
towards the Canidae. Previous studies
based on postcranial elements6 have
shown that in elbow joint architecture the
thylacine rather displays convergence
with the Felidae, highlighting its unique
suite of characters.
The thylacine study highlights the
continued importance of historic museum
collections in advancing our understanding
of the natural world. Specimen C5757,
a one-month-old female, was collected
with her three litter mates and their dead
mother in June 1909, the same year as the
last thylacine bounty was paid in full. The
specimen was put in a glass container,
covered in ethanol, and has been stored in
the collections of the Museum Victoria ever
since. The curator at the time could not
have foreseen the role that C5757 would
play in advancing our understanding of
the evolution and ecology of the thylacine,
which would be forever lost less than two
decades later; another 44 years would
follow before the double helical structure
of DNA was discovered and its central
importance in biology was realized. The
sequencing of the thylacine genome will
not bring this species back from extinction,
but it goes some way to showing us how
much we have lost. ❐
Ross Barnett1 and Eline Lorenzen2*
1
Department of Archaeology, Durham University,
Durham, UK. 2Natural History Museum of
Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen,
Denmark.
*e-mail: elinelorenzen@snm.ku.dk
Published online: 14 December 2017
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0384-3
References
1. Guiler, E. R. Thylacine: The Tragedy of the Tasmanian Tiger
(Oxford Univ. Press, Melbourne, 1985).
2. Paull, J. in Island Futures: Conservation and Development Across
the Asia-Pacific Region (eds Baldacchino, G. & Niles, D.) 153–168
(Springer, Tokyo, 2011).
3. Feigin, C. Y. et al. Nat. Ecol. Evol. http://doi.org/10.1038/
s41559-017-0417-y (2017).
4. Miller, W. et al. Genome Res. 19, 213–220 (2009).
5. Bininda-Emonds, O. R. et al. Nature 446, 507–512 (2007).
6. Figueirido, B. & Janis, C. M. Biol. Lett. 7, 937–940 (2011).
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.