The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) is an extinct carnivorous marsupial indigenous to Australia. It is related to other carnivorous marsupials: the quolls, dunnarts, numbats, and Tasmanian devils.
Thylacines were semi-nocturnal ambush predators, preying on birds and small mammals between 5-17 kgs.
The thylacine was an apex predators on the Aboriginal Mainland until the introduction of the dingo 5000 years ago. The dingo (Canis lupus dingo) population spread throughout the Continent within 100 years.
Due to a combination of Indigenous hunting with domesticated dingo and wild dingo competing for similar food sources, the thylacine became extinct on the mainland 3500 years ago.
Indigenous people throughout Australia have recorded rock art and oral histories of the thylacine. There are rock engravings at Murujuga on the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia and rock paintings in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.
In South Australia, Adnyamathanha people from the Ikara Flinders Ranges have rock art of the thylacine, which they call ‘Marru Kurli’.
Nearby, Kaurna people from Tarntanya Adelaide use a very similar name for a dingo: ‘ Warru Kadli ’.
It is thought that Kaurna people such as Adnyamathanha had used the term ‘Warru Kadli’ for thylacine and, following its extinction, transferred the name to the newly arrived dingo.
In lutruwita Tasmania the larger species of thylacine is called kaparunina by pakana people in palawa kani language. pakana people have recorded stories of the kaparunina.
The British colonisation of lutruwita Tasmania led to its complete extinction.
The Van Diemen’s Land Company introduced bounties on the thylacine from the 1830’s, based on the unfounded belief that it preyed on the coloniser’s domestic sheep.
Between 1888 to 1908 the Tasmanian Government offered a bounty of one pound for an adult and ten shillings for a pup. By 1909 a total of 2,184 bounties had been paid to farmers and hunters.
The last wild thylacine was killed in 1930 and the last thylacine held in captivity died at Hobart Zoo in 1936.
REFERENCES:
https://australian.museum/learn/australia-over-time/extinct-animals/the-thylacine/
https://www.britannica.com/animal/thylacine
http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine
https://www.gbif.org/species/113394899
http://tacinc.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Three-Capes-Welcome.pdf
https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/12/15/1265476.htm
The impact of the dingo on the thylacine in Holocene Australia 2012, M. Fillios, M. Crowther & M. Letnic
Mammals of the Dreaming, An Historical Ethnomammalogy of the Flinders Ranges, 1996, D Tunbridge