Benjamin was alone. He was the last one, shivering in a cold, concrete cage at the Hobart Zoo while the Tasmanian sun beat down or the frost crept in. On September 7, 1936, he died. Most people assume that was the end of it. The official Tasmanian tiger date of extinction is usually pinned to that specific Tuesday night in Tasmania, marking the moment the thylacine vanished from the face of the Earth. But history is rarely that clean.
It’s actually a bit of a tragedy how he went. Benjamin wasn’t even a "he" by some accounts; some researchers suggest the last tiger was actually a female, though the name stuck. He died of neglect. Someone forgot to open the door to his sheltered sleeping quarters, leaving him exposed to the extreme Tasmanian weather. One day he was a living, breathing relic of a lineage going back millions of years. The next? An extinct species.
Why 1936 isn't the whole story
Scientists don't just pick a date out of a hat. The Tasmanian tiger date of extinction is technically 1936 because that’s the last time we had "clear and irrefutable" evidence of a living specimen. However, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) generally waits 50 years after the last confirmed sighting before declaring a species extinct. For the thylacine, that official declaration didn't come until 1982.
Think about that gap.
For nearly half a century, the world lived in a weird limbo where the tiger was both gone and maybe not gone. Even today, if you head into the dense scrub of the Tarkine or the rugged wilderness of the Tasmanian Highlands, you’ll find locals who swear on their lives they’ve seen one. Are they crazy? Maybe. But the dense rainforests of Tasmania are some of the most impenetrable places on the planet.
The timeline of their downfall started way before 1936. While the dingo pushed them off mainland Australia about 3,000 years ago, they thrived in Tasmania until Europeans arrived. Then came the bounties. In 1888, the Tasmanian government actually paid people to kill them. They were branded as "sheep killers," though later anatomical studies of their jaw structure suggest they probably weren't strong enough to take down a full-grown sheep. They were scapegoats.
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The hunt for a later date
There is a fascinating study published in Science of the Total Environment by Barry Brook and his team that challenges the 1936 timeline. They used a massive database of over 1,000 sightings—some confirmed, many anecdotal—and ran them through a rigorous statistical model.
The results were wild.
The model suggested that the thylacine likely persisted in small, isolated pockets of the wilderness well into the 1960s or 1980s. There's even a tiny, statistically improbable chance they are still out there today. But "likely" isn't "definitely." We need a body, a high-resolution photo, or a scrap of fresh DNA.
- The 1930s: The population was already in a death spiral due to the "bounty years," habitat loss, and a distemper-like disease that swept through the remaining packs.
- The 1937 Search: Just a year after Benjamin died, an expedition led by Sergeant James Wright found "promising tracks" in the northwest, but no animal.
- The 1940s-50s: Sightings continued to pour in from timber workers and trappers. These weren't city folk looking for fame; these were people who knew the bush like the back of their hand.
- The 1980s: This was the era of the famous Kevin Cameron photos. They were grainy, blurry, and ultimately inconclusive, but they sparked a fever dream of hope across Australia.
Biology of a "Tiger" that wasn't a tiger
Honestly, the name is a total mess. It’s not a tiger. It’s not a wolf. It’s a marsupial. It had a pouch that opened backward—so it wouldn't fill with dirt while digging—and stripes that ran down its lower back. It was a masterpiece of convergent evolution.
They were shy. Nocturnal. They had this weird, stiff-legged "yip-yap" bark when they were on the hunt. Most interestingly, they could open their mouths to an incredible 80-degree angle. If you saw one in the dark, you wouldn't think "cute doggy." You'd think "prehistoric nightmare."
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The tragedy of the Tasmanian tiger date of extinction is that we killed them just as we were starting to understand them. By the time the government finally granted the species protected status in 1936, there were only 59 days left before the last known individual died. Talk about too little, too late.
Can we bring them back?
This is where the story gets very Jurassic Park. A company called Colossal Biosciences is currently working on "de-extinction." They aren't just playing around with fossils; they are using CRISPR gene-editing technology to compare the thylacine genome (which has been fully sequenced from preserved museum specimens) with its closest living relative, the fat-tailed dunnart.
The dunnart is about the size of a mouse. It’s a bit of a stretch to turn a mouse-sized creature into a 60-pound predator, but they are making progress. They’ve already managed to reconstruct large chunks of the thylacine genome with incredible accuracy.
But should we?
Some ecologists argue that the money spent on de-extinction should go toward saving species that are currently on the brink, like the Tasmanian Devil, which is being decimated by a transmissible facial tumor. Others argue that bringing back the thylacine would restore balance to the Tasmanian ecosystem, which has lacked an apex predator for nearly a century. It's a messy, complicated debate with no easy answers.
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Why we can't let go
People are obsessed with the thylacine because it represents our collective guilt. We know we messed up. We hunted a unique, beautiful creature into oblivion because of a lie about sheep poaching. Finding one alive today would be the ultimate "get out of jail free" card for human environmental impact.
There have been thousands of sightings since the official Tasmanian tiger date of extinction. In the 1980s, a park ranger named Hans Naarding reported a sighting that is still considered one of the most credible to this day. He was out in the rain, at night, and saw one in his headlights. He watched it for several minutes. He was an expert. He wasn't prone to exaggeration. But without a photo, it’s just another story.
The hunt continues. High-tech camera traps are scattered all over the Tasmanian wilderness. Every few years, a "new" video surfaces on YouTube, usually showing a mangy fox or a feral cat from a distance, and the cycle of hope and disappointment starts all over again.
What you can do to learn more
If you're genuinely interested in the history and the science behind the thylacine's disappearance, don't just stick to the conspiracy forums. There are some incredible, rigorous resources out there that separate the myths from the reality.
- Visit the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) in Hobart. They have the most extensive collection of thylacine remains and the actual footage of Benjamin. It’s haunting to see in person.
- Read The Last Tasmanian Tiger by Robert Paddle. It’s widely considered the definitive book on the species and exposes the political and social reasons they were hunted to extinction.
- Check out the Thylacine Archive. It’s a digital repository of historical documents, bounty records, and photographs that give a much clearer picture of the population's decline than any Wikipedia summary.
- Support the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program. By protecting the remaining marsupial carnivores in Tasmania, we are honoring the legacy of the one we lost.
The Tasmanian tiger date of extinction might be written in the history books as 1936, but the animal lives on in our culture, our science, and our stubborn hope that maybe, just maybe, the bush is still hiding a secret. Whether we find them or recreate them in a lab, the thylacine isn't done with us yet.