Re: Australian museum drops bid to clone extinct Tasmanian "tiger"

[Tim Williams <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>]

Dann Pigdon wrote:

> > The last known thylacine, a striped, dog-like marsupial -- animals which
> > keep their young in a pouch -- died in captivity in Hobart in 1936...
>
> And yet it is still illegal to attempt to trap Thylacines (two men were
> convicted in the 1980s of the crime).

I'm assuming the miscreants didn't catch a live thylacine.  If they had 
caught one, the sentence (whatever it was) would probably have been worth 
it.

It saddens me to say this, but the poor old thylacine is almost certainly 
extinct.  I know the sightings continue, giving credence to the opinion that 
the thylacine is still Australia's most common extinct animal.

As for the cloning experiment, this was always a pipe-dream.  There was no 
shame in trying though.  Maybe one day, decades from now...