44 replies to this topic

[Yowie]

Hi all

I saw this interview on the Australian Today Show this morning.  Australian investigator Murray McAllister has planned another expedition in October to investigate some areas in Tasmania where there are some promising sightings of the Thylacine.  He claims around 20 personal sightings of the animal since his investigations began in 1998.  

The interview can be found on the following link

http://today.ninemsn...videoindex.aspx

For those not familiar with modern sightings here in Australia, sightings have not been limited to just Tasmania with claims from Victoria, New South Wales, and right up to the rainforests of North Queensland.  Fossil evidence shows the Thylacine did once populate the mainland and there are even Aboriginal cave paintings in the Northern Territory that depict the animal.



It was believed that Aboriginal hunting pressure and competition with the Dingo caused its presumed mainland extinction around 3500 years ago.  There is some opposition to this theory as the Thylacine (Tasmanian population) was larger than the Dingo and assumed to have not suffered in competition with the dog. Interestingly though, fossil evidence of mainland specimens show a much smaller animal with some Thylacine females measuring approximately the same size as a fox.

[Old Man Waffles]

yay i hope they can find it, breed it, and make the population grow. its sad how their extinct

[DieChecker]

I thought they were just going to clone the Tazi Tiger and get some that way.

I do hope that the expidition finds something. I've read of encounters on the mainland that sound very tigerish.

[Imaginarynumber1]

DieChecker, on 13 May 2012 - 09:12 PM, said:

I thought they were just going to clone the Tazi Tiger and get some that way.

That would be nice, but I would have to think that any DNA they would have or could obtain would be fragmented and not contain the entire Thylacine genome. Not to mention the fact that there really isn't a suitable to host womb to grow one in. Maybe in a few more decade cloning techniques will have improved and maybe we may have somehow found an intact Thylacine genome, but until then, I'm afraid it's wishful thinking.

[Orcseeker]

I hope they find something, I've watched a few documentaries with some reliable witnesses claiming they've seen one

[Slave2Fate]

Yowie, on 13 May 2012 - 05:04 AM, said:

He claims around 20 personal sightings of the animal since his investigations began in 1998.  

And not one decent photograph of one? You'd think that after so many sightings that this person would have something a little more solid for evidence.

[Night Walker]

Murray McAllister has exclussive footage of a recent sighting of the Tasmanian Tiger (April 2009). This is 8 seconds from almost 9 minutes of footage:




Does that qualify as a thylacine sighting?

[Slave2Fate]

Night Walker, on 14 May 2012 - 07:20 AM, said:

Murray McAllister has exclussive footage of a recent sighting of the Tasmanian Tiger (April 2009). This is 8 seconds from almost 9 minutes of footage:

*snipped vid

Does that qualify as a thylacine sighting?

Hey NW, thanks for sharing that, I hadn't seen it before. It does seem like a good bit of evidence but I'm not knowledgeable enough in the fauna of the region to say one way or another if it's a Thylacine. Could there be other animals that share the traits seen in the vid? Size, color,gait, etc. etc. ?

[Yowie]

Night Walker, on 14 May 2012 - 07:20 AM, said:

Does that qualify as a thylacine sighting?

Too far away, grainy footage.  Completely inconclusive.  I guess time will tell if this guy can come through with the goods!

[Night Walker]

Tasmanian Tiger Back On the Prowl? Not So Fast
Brett Israel
Date: 17 November 2010 Time: 09:21 AM ET

Scientists are unconvinced by the video, which originally surfaced last year.

"In my opinion, the video clearly shows a red fox running across the paddock, not a thylacine," said Jeremy Austin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Adelaide in South Australia.

Other scientists agree. The animal's gait gives it away, said Cameron Campbell of the Thylacine Museum, a website dedicated to Tasmanian tigers. Campbell said in an email that he and his fellow thylacine researchers all agree that the animal shown in the video is certainly a red fox (Vulpes vulpes), a species introduced to Australia from Europe in the mid-1800s. Since then, red foxes have spread across the continent.

Austin said the man who shot the video, Murray McAllister, sent him DNA samples of the supposed thylacine for testing. The samples tested positive for red fox.

[Yowie]

Slave2Fate, on 14 May 2012 - 07:40 AM, said:

Hey NW, thanks for sharing that, I hadn't seen it before. It does seem like a good bit of evidence but I'm not knowledgeable enough in the fauna of the region to say one way or another if it's a Thylacine. Could there be other animals that share the traits seen in the vid? Size, color,gait, etc. etc. ?

I think NW's short statement is more directed at the lack of quality and evidence provided by the video.  Which is true.  It's a terrible video that proves nothing, though the guy claims sightings and is throwing his time and money into the search so cheers to him.

[Night Walker]

... according to McAllister's website he has seen the tiger many times, not just in Tasmania but also on the Australian mainland. McAllister manages to fit in his tiger expeditions around his professional life as a PE teacher at a Secondary College in Melbourne.

http://www.coolearth...utube-1544.html

[Yowie]

Night Walker, on 14 May 2012 - 08:03 AM, said:

... according to McAllister's website he has seen the tiger many times, not just in Tasmania but also on the Australian mainland. McAllister manages to fit in his tiger expeditions around his professional life as a PE teacher at a Secondary College in Melbourne.

http://www.coolearth...utube-1544.html

Forgive me if I interpret this the wrong way, but is it true to say that your use of highlighting technique caries an undertone of stultification towards the above statement?

For those not familiar with claims of Thylacine sightings in Australia, mainland sightings are the most disputed by the Boffins.  Often claims arise in areas of rainforest or thick scrub environments which are quickly discredited by scientists that say that the Thylacine was an animal of open plains and would have certainly been seen if it still existed.  We do know for sure that they existed on the mainland from fossil evidence, with the Tasmanian population surviving thanks to geographical isolation from the Dingo.  But who knows what the characteristics of the mainland Thylacine were?  No one has ever had a chance to study them or their ecological niche?  Convergent evolution allowed the Thylacine to exclusively occupy the same ecological niche as the dog here in Australia, and in the rest of the world the dog managed to adapt to nearly every environmental niche on the planet.  Is it really stretching the limit of science for a previously undetected species to crawl out of some of our wildest wilderness environments?  If there are very small remnant populations still out there, and excluding the chance that one pioneering specimen decides to commit suicide on one of our highways for all to discover, then chances are we may never find them if we are not looking.  Scientists, School teachers, Kung fu masters...whoever you are, cheers to you for getting out there and making the effort.

Edited by Yowie, 14 May 2012 - 09:49 AM.

[Myles]

This is good news.   Of all the creatures discussed on the forum, the thylacine is the most likely to exist (still exist).

[Night Walker]

Yowie, on 14 May 2012 - 09:43 AM, said:

Forgive me if I interpret this the wrong way, but is it true to say that your use of highlighting technique caries an undertone of stultification towards the above statement?

No.

stultification - derision of someone or something as foolish or absurd or inconsistent. http://www.thefreedi.../Stultification

Not derision. Simply pointing out another potential example of confirmation bias in action. Believing is Seeing in the world of cryptozoology and McAllister's multiple sighting claims of a mainland thylacine highlight that bias and diminish the validity of his Tasmanian thylacine sightings. Enthusiasm for the cause can be both a blessing and a curse...