New Australian book queries Tasmanian Tiger extinction...

Does the Tasmanian Tiger still roam the island state, parts of the Australian mainland, and the northern land mass of Irian Jaya-Papua New Guinea? 

Despite being hunted to extinction in the early part of the 20th century, the Tasmanian Tiger continues to stalk the imaginations of people the world over. What's more, hundreds of reports of the striped dog-like marsupial with the fearsome gaping jaw are made each year in Australia. 

In The Tasmanian Tiger: Extinct or Extant?, biologists, geneticists, naturalists, and academics explore the evidence for and against the continuing existence of Thylacinus cynocephalus.

Featuring essays by Peter Chapple, Ned Terry, Col Bailey, Bob Paddle, Nick Mooney, Tony Healy, Paul Cropper, Andrew Pask, Malcolm Smith, Gary Opit and Michael Williams.

Forget big cats - search is on for tigers!

The State Government says it's likely big cats don't exist - but Tasmanian Tigers may be roaming the hills, according to the Free Press Leader.

A Monbulk group that investigates rare animals, believes Tasmanian Tigers - declared extinct last century - are alive and well and in the area.

The Australian Rare Fauna Research Association (ARFRA) is a voluntary organisation that records and investigates sightings of unusual animals.

ARFRA president Dorothy Williams said there have been sightings of Tasmanian Tigers (thylacine) in the area for many years, but with little publicity.

In modern times, the animals have been recorded as native to Tasmania, but scientists believe they were once widespread throughout mainland Australia and Papua New Guinea.

"People have reported sightings of 'strange foxes' to us that we believe are thylacines," Ms Williams said.

The 81-year-old has been involved with ARFRA since 1990 and is working on a book about the group's work, based on the research of its late founder, Peter Chapple, who died in 1992.

She said the group urged anyone who had seen something that resembled a Tasmanian Tiger to contact them confidentially.

She said the group even had reported sightings of a yowie - a mythical Australian version of the yeti.

Members are needed to continue investigations, including night-time expeditions, into the tigers.

Does the Thylacine still roam Victoria?

Over at The Casey Weekly, the Thylacine is the talk of the town. Here's what report Catherine Watson had to say about it:

The Tasmanian tiger was declared officially extinct when the last zoo animal died in Hobart in 1936. But over the years there have been several possible sightings on the outskirts of Cranbourne.

An image of a Tasmanian tiger sticks in many people's minds. Pictured in the Hobart Zoo in 1936, the lone animal stares warily out of her cage, the last remnant of a doomed species. She died soon after the photo was taken.

The Tasmanian tiger haunts the Australian imagination as no other animal does. Perhaps it's because Australians watched it become extinct before their eyes and only realised when it was gone what they had lost.

Less than 30 years earlier, the Tasmanian government had been paying out a bounty on tigers. It wasn't until 1936 that it was gazetted as a protected species.

Even in the 1950s, 15 or 20 years after the animal had been declared nationally extinct, reports of possible sightings prompted carloads of men with dogs and guns to set out on tiger hunts. The hunts were always unsuccessful, and a question mark remains on whether the tiger survives on the mainland.

In June 2009, the Cranbourne Journal (predecessor of the Casey Weekly) ran an article on a possible sighting of a Tasmanian tiger crossing Chevron Avenue, Cranbourne South, in 2001. Another Cranbourne resident claimed to have seen a tiger in Tooradin in 2000.


But does it survive on the mainland? The Australian Rare Fauna Research Association has about 3800 mainland sightings of an animal answering the description of the tiger in its files.

ARFRA secretary Dorothy Williams says a quick search brings up reports from Crib Point (1973), Warneet (1997) and Tooradin (2000).

While this is no hot spot for sightings, there are clusters of sightings not far away in the Dandenongs to the north, part of the east coast of

Western Port, and south from Wonthaggi, among many more scattered Gippsland sightings.

"It's always possible that some unexpected event can send an animal away from its usual territory."

She says the accounts differ from one eyewitness to another, but two details are constant: vertical stripes on the animal's back and its peculiar gait. People often report that the animal they saw ran clumsily, and nothing like a dog or fox.

What the association doesn't have yet is a photograph, the remains of a tiger from the mainland or - best of all - a live animal.

DNA tests of such an animal would solve the final mystery: whether mainland tigers - if they exist - are related to Tasmanian tigers, whether they are remnants of a separated mainland population or whether they are a different but similar animal.

The association is careful in its use of language when talking about possible sighting. It does not claim that the tiger exists, only that it has too many credible reports to ignore the possibility.

In 1979, there was a much reported report of a Tasmanian tiger by fencing workers at Lang Lang early one morning. This is one of the few daytime reports, it was seen by several people and - very importantly - they hadn't been drinking.

DISTINGUISHING features of the thylacine:

■ Stripes across the rump and lower tail (in most individuals).

■ The thickness of the tail at the rump.

■ The low hock (heel).

■ Size: ranges from the size of a fox to a large German shepherd, depending on age and sex.

■ Colour: sandy to dark brown with darker stripes.

■ Gait: unusual, slow and clumsy to very fast, sometimes bounding or sitting up.

Australian carnivorous 'Spinosaur' under spotlight

Australia's first carnivorous dinosaur has been unearthed by a team of palaeontologists.

The discovery of a 'spinosaur' neck vertebra in Victoria shows the fish-eating theropod dinosaur was not restricted to the Northern Hemisphere, as previously thought. 

The findings, published in the journal Biology Letters, also suggest that dinosaurs found in other parts of the world may also have inhabited Australia in the Early Cretaceous period.

Researchers from London's Natural History Museum, the University of Cambridge, Museum Victoria and Monash University were thrilled when they were able to identify the fossil.

"Spinosaurs were previously known to be from Europe, Africa and South America," says Dr Thomas Rich, palaeontologist from Museum Victoria. "The fact that they existed in Australia changes our understanding of the evolution of this group of dinosaurs."

The vertebra fossil was discovered by Michael Cleeland (a well-known name in Australian cryptozoology circles) and George Caspar near Victoria's Cape Otway Lighthouse in 2005. It was then painstakingly prepared at Museum Victoria until it could be identified as Australia's first-ever spinosaurid.

The team was able to deduce the neck vertebra belonged to a small juvenile, around two metres long, which lived 105 million years ago. 

Some types of spinosaurs - meaning 'spine lizard'- are thought to have been the largest of all known carnivorous dinosaurs, including the Tyrannosaurus Rex and Giganotosaurus. Some fossil remains show they had narrow crocodile-like skulls, which were probably used for eating fish. Fossils also suggest they had distinctive spines, with long extensions of the vertebra forming a sail on its back.

But another co-author on the paper, Professor Patricia Vickers-Rich, palaeontologist at Monash University, says it isn't possible to draw conclusions about the type of newly announced spinosaur, its sex or its body structure when there is only a 4cm vertebra to go by. These details can only be fleshed out if more spinosaur fossils are discovered.

At the time the spinosaur lived, Australia was not an isolated landmass, making it easier for dinosaurs to move around.

"When the Earth evolved into separate continents, the various families of dinosaurs had already reached those landmasses, which explains why the same ones have been found in places now far apart from one another," says Thomas.

Patricia says this challenges the idea an endemic fauna was present in Australia 110-120 million years ago.
She believes there could be many more dinosaur groups still to be discovered in Australia.

"The record is so sparse and these fossils are so difficult to find. Every bone has the chance to be something different," Patricia says. "[This vertebra] could have been from something more common, but spinosaurs are carnivores, which are usually very rare in population."