Talk:Thylacine/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Edit suggestion

This text:

"per head. (Current value today, after inflation and introduction of decimal currency: $132.29) for"

should be changed to read

"per head (the equivalent of £100 or more today) for"

This page explains why "$132.29" is far more precise than it ought to be.

71.197.166.72 (talk) 20:28, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Apokryltaros. There's still a stray period in there, though. 71.197.166.72 (talk) 23:42, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

David Fleay said the last Thylacine was a male

Should it be noted that David Fleay (the man who filmed and photographed the last captive Thylacine) said that the last individual was a male?

http://www.naturalworlds.org/thylacine/additional/benjamin/Benjamin_2.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by Internetnicknamehere (talk • contribs) 10:54, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

The gender of Benjamin is reported inconsistently. Para 1 of "Benjamin and searches" states "Darby also appears to be the source for the claim that the last thylacine was a male; photographic evidence suggests it was female.[77]" Yet in the next para we read: "In 2011, detailed examination of a single frame from the motion film footage confirmed that the thylacine was male." This is inconsistent and should be corrected, whichever is correct (both are sourced).

--121.222.245.180 (talk) 09:18, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

New video

‘Extinct’ Tasmanian Tiger caught on camera? (VIDEO) - RT.com - 17 September 2016 The Cube Root Of Infinity (talk) 11:52, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

The hind feet (from heel to toes) look way too long in comparison. Probably just a dog. Anyway, "with its “prehistoric looking head” catching the woman’s attention." So before 1936 is prehistory now?FunkMonk (talk) 20:26, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

The hind feet are "dog," yet the gait is in no way dog. More like the "gamboling" of a calf or lamb: up-down-up-down. It never trots like a canid does.--75.164.145.192 (talk) 05:11, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

If the hind feet are those of a dog, it is not a thylacine. Gaits can be affected by a million things. The proportions of limbs not. FunkMonk (talk) 07:44, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Another notable movie + game

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmania_Story#Video_game

Heck someone even included the game's opening shot the moment you boot it up. --107.77.207.219 (talk) 00:34, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Notability--Mr Fink (talk) 03:09, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Grammar error?

The last sentence of the 3rd paragraph says "Despite its official classification as extinct, sightings are still reported, though none has been conclusively proven." I believe this is a grammar error, and that the sentence should read as follows:

Despite its official classification as extinct, sightings are still reported, though none have been conclusively proven.

The sightings have not been proven, rather than the sightings has not been proven. Can anybody confirm/correct this?

2600:E000:54:139:9AEE:CBFF:FE03:5E93 (talk) 06:41, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

'None' means 'not one'. Therefore the singular is correct. Akld guy (talk) 05:31, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

No longer extinct

The species status needs to be changed. The Thylacine is no longer considered extinct. They have been found. Someone should edit the page. Please edit this. This information is very important. And people need to know. -A.E.M. 2/2/2017 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:6000:78C3:3200:E02D:4561:B6CF:84E (talk) 23:29, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

The researchers are investigating proof of existence - the study itself is not proof that the species is not extinct.

"A team of investigators from the Centre for Fortean Zoology, which operates from a small farmhouse in north Devon, is currently in Tasmania hunting down clues to prove the thylacine, commonly known as the Tassie tiger, still exists."

Regards  NeoGeneric 💬  01:45, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Nobody has declared the Thylacine extinct. According to the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, the Thylacine is listed on their Threatened Species list, and is "presumed extinct": "Listed as presumed extinct under both the Federal and State Threatened Species Protection Acts. This means thylacine have not been officially sighted in the wild or captivity for at least 50 years." http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/index.aspx?base=971 I hope this clarifies the situation. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 11:59, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

The IUCN Red List says it is extinct, and that is the generally recognized international authority. No one has provided proof otherwise. There have been no verified road kills or other carcasses recovered, and no adequate-quality videos or photographs. —BarrelProof (talk) 21:30, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

"Presumed extinct" may be a semantic remnant of the Endangered Species Protection Act 1992 which classified threatened species as endangered, vulnerable or presumed extinct. It has since been repealed and threatened species are categorised as extinct, extinct in the wild, critically endangered etc. Furthermore, the Threatened Species Kit (2003) which you have linked to is out of date, as noted by the disclaimer, which may be why it uses this old legislative terminology.  NeoGeneric 💬  01:22, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Based on the evidence provided, that is the official position of the Government of Tasmania. Your comments on how that arose borders on personal conjecture. All that I ask is that people keep an open mind regarding its extinction/non-extinction. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 21:30, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

"Official position of the Govt of Tasmania"? - you have referenced an outdated resource on the Tas Parks website "specifically designed for school students". I would not call that official. If you want an authoritative answer for the official position of the Govt of Tas, I would suggest the Natural Values Atlas. As I already have a login, to save you and others from having to register for access, here are some of the species details for Thylacinus cynocephalus:

• Threatened?: Yes
• State Schedule: extinct
• National Schedule: Extinct
• Conservation Significance?: No
• Biogeographic Origin: Endemic, considered extinct in Tasmania

But I feel this is all an argument on the semantics of "extinction" - something that was known to exist, but can no longer be found. I wish any researchers best of luck in search of the Thylacine, because it is the sum of good evidence which reinforces the idea that something exists, and the lack of which reinforces the idea it can no longer be found. This is the somewhat fundamental idea behind science.  NeoGeneric 💬  05:00, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

References

Extinction from mainland Australia

"The absolute extinction is attributed to competition from indigenous humans and invasive dingoes."

The "indigenous" should be changed considering context, humans as a species are only native to Africa. Seems oxymoronic to regard humans as native but not dingoes. Please change to "Australian Aboriginals". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.77.173.2 (talk) 22:34, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Cultural references

Crash Bandicoot is a well-known videogame franchise, and Tiny Tiger (one of the recurring bosses) is a Thylacine. Charles Zembillas (one of the main artists for the original trilogy of games) talks about Tiny's origin on his blog, specifically mentioning how his original name was indeed "Tasmanian Tiger". 201.214.215.217 (talk) 22:17, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

• Is this in any way significant on par with it being on coat of arms, focus of literature and so on? We're not supposed to list every inconsequential appearance of a given species in popular media. Some of the entries present now also seem too WP:trivial. We need less fluff, not more. FunkMonk (talk) 22:32, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

i would suggest that some of the fluff can be transmuted and preserved. Put it into a note, where it's existence would be documented, but it would not clutter the main text in the article. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 18:35, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

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Phylogeny

Hello everyone,

I recently completed a research paper regarding the thylacine. I believe It would be beneficial to include more information on the phylogeny of this marsupial. The following is an exert from my project:

"When determining the phylogeny of the thylacine, the evidence, brought forward, supported that the thylacine be placed into its own family- Thylacinidae. The reason for its classification, was based upon its dental and pedal morphology which did not resemble other Australian marsupials (Krajewski et al. 1992). Some argued that the species was closely related to extinct marsupial lineages from South America. However, it was eventually determined that the resemblances, between the two groups, were due to convergent evolution and that evidence supported that the thylacine should be placed under the Australian family Dasyuridae. A later study of basicranial morphology, eventually concluded that the thylacine shared no derived features of either the South American marsupials or the dasyuroids (Krajewski et al. 1992). It was determined that thylacines possessed features that were considered primitive for marsupials based upon DNA analysis of cytochrome b (ex: heart structure) (Krajewski et al. 1992). Further research, conducted on the basal ganglia of the thylacine and Tasmanian devil (the thylacine’s closest relative), showed a more modularized pattern in the cortex of the thylacine while the cortex of the Tasmanian devil was dominated by the putamen (Berns and Ashwell 2017)."

References: Berns, Gregory S., Ashwell, Ken W. S. 2017. Reconstruction of the Cortical Maps of the Tasmanian Tiger and Comparison to the Tasmanian Devil. PLOS ONE. 12(1): 1-12 Krajewski, Carey, Diskell, Amy C., Baverstock, Peter R., Braun, Michael J. 1992. Phylogenetic relationships of the thylacine (Mammalia: Thylacinidae) among dasyuroid marsupials: evidence from cytochrome b DNA sequences. The Royal Society. 250: 19-27 Berns, Gregory S., Ashwell, Ken W. S. 2017. Reconstruction of the Cortical Maps of the Tasmanian Tiger and Comparison to the Tasmanian Devil. PLOS ONE. 12(1): 1-12 Krajewski, Carey, Diskell, Amy C., Baverstock, Peter R., Braun, Michael J. 1992. Phylogenetic relationships of the thylacine (Mammalia: Thylacinidae) among dasyuroid marsupials: evidence from cytochrome b DNA sequences. The Royal Society. 250: 19-27

This is simply food for thought. I found the references and information interesting. Who would ever figure that such a species would spark such a complex debate as to where this animal should be placed on the phylogenetic tree. I would suggest reading the articles I referenced for more detail.

Submission Request by: Patrick Zedalis Pjzedalis (talk) 06:20, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

When genetic diversity declined

Please put that the decline in genetic diversity is thought to have occurred around 70,000 to 120,000 years ago.

note: for some reason, the full citation breaks the talk page. Here's the article title and link (open access) instead: --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:39, 13 December 2017 (UTC) Genome of the Tasmanian tiger provides insights into the evolution and demography of an extinct marsupial carnivore. [1]

The best place to put this would be after: "Further work in 2012 examined the relationship of the genetic diversity of the thylacines before their extinction. The results indicated that the last of the thylacines in Australia, on top of the threats from dingoes, had limited genetic diversity, due to their complete geographic isolation from mainland Australia.[76]"

Thank you. --122.108.141.214 (talk) 23:41, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Done Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 15:24, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 December 2017

I request to add a new paragraph to the end of the section titled "Modern research and projects", describing the recently thylacine genome paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. As a disclaimer, I am an author on the paper

. I am happy to have an established Wikipedia user amend the text or correct the markup as they see fit. The suggested text for the paragraph is as follows:

A draft genome sequence of the thylacine was produced by Feigin et al. using the DNA extracted of an ethanol-preserved pouch young specimen provided by Museums Victoria. Their work was published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution in 2017. Analysis of Retroposon presence/absence patterns supported the basal position of the thylacine within the order Dasyuromorphia and showed considerable incomplete lineage sorting within this clade. Demographic analyses using MSMC suggested that the thylacine had undergone a decline in effective population size, predating the arrival of humans in Australia. However, the researchers noted that similar signals could be the product of a population structure characterised by a large number of demes with low migration, which is highly plausible for a large dispersed predator. Comparative genomic and morphometric analyses revealed that in spite of the morphological convergence between the thylacine (a marsupial) and placental canids, that key developmental genes did not show signatures of adaptive convergence. Rather, they suggested that changes in cis-regulatory regions are more likely drivers of thylacine-canid convergence. Memory-donk (talk) 02:27, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

References

Not done: The study summarized was added by the last edit request and this level of detail obscures the findings. This suggestion is also far, far too technical in phrasing for a general-audience encyclopedia. Any interested reader that can understand this can also follow the link already given and read the abstract themselves. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 15:29, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Duly noted that the paragraph is too technical, but with all due respect this is the largest pieces of modern thylacine research in a decade and is not mentioned in the "Modern research and projects" section at all, while two TED talks (which are not research) get their own paragraph. While the article is cited (for what I'll add is an incorrect interpretation of the results misreported in the popular press, as psmc/msmc does not tell you about genetic diversity, it tells you about effective population size), the fact that the genome was sequenced has not been mentioned anywhere in the article. If you would kindly reconsider I have amended the paragraph to still reflect the general content of the paper but without overly technical detail. Thank you for your time and consideration.

A draft genome sequence of the thylacine was produced by Feigin et al. using the DNA extracted of an ethanol-preserved pouch young specimen provided by Museums Victoria. Their work was published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution in 2017. Researchers used the genome to study aspects of the thylacine's evolution and natural history, including the genetic basis of its convergence with canids, clarifying its evolutionary relationships with other marsupials and examining changes in its population size over time.

 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Memory-donk (talk • contribs) 01:15, 15 December 2017 (UTC) 

@Memory-donk:, as noted above, this study is already in the article, although in a different section. Please read the "Extinction from Mainland Australian" section, specifically this: "Further investigations in 2017 showed evidence that this decline in genetic diversity started long before the arrival of humans in Australia, possibly starting as early as 72-120 thousand years before the present." This is cited to the exact study you are referencing. The origin, etc. of the genome sequence is of specialist interest and, as I said earlier, anyone interested in that level of detail can simply read the study (or at least the abstract). Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 02:04, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

References

Hi again @Eggishorn. If you read my comment, I point out that while the article cited is the same, the statement that you have highlighted is factually incorrect (I say this being the lead author on the paper and understanding it well) and does not report the genome being sequenced. You have also neglected to address that this modern research is not presented in the modern research section, an organisational oversight. Your suggestion that 'they can look at the abstract' can equally well be applied to everything else in this entire article that links to a published paper. The fact that primary sources exist hardly abrogates the need for an encyclopedia to summarise that work. I have amended the paragraph to remove excess detail to address the main substantial criticism you levelled (please see previous comment).

@Memory-donk:, could you please propose an alteration to "Further investigations in 2017 showed evidence that this decline in genetic diversity started long before the arrival of humans in Australia, possibly starting as early as 72-120 thousand years before the present." that would make it more accurate? Then perhaps @Eggishorn: may be prevailed upon to modify that statement. --122.108.141.214 (talk) 03:49, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

@122.108.141.214 Hi, yes, I already have suggested text in my paragraph intended for the Modern research section. I was told it was too technical. I'll try to summarise it more simply here, but its not a straightforward result:

Demographic analyses of the thylacine suggested a decline in effective population size starting as early as 72-120 thousand years before the present. However, similar results can be caused by population structures that are consistent with a large, geographically dispersed predator.

The paragraph that the genome paper is currently cited in here is about genetic diversity. Given that this result is not about genetic diversity, it seems pretty clear that even the corrected sentence does not belong in that discussion. A further difficulty is that our interpretation of the results are conditional (i.e. we can't distinguish between effective population size trends and population structure). More importantly though, this whole analysis was not the main emphasis of the genome paper, which focused much more heavily on the thylacine's convergent evolution with canids. I sincerely believe it would be more appropriate to update the modern research section, as has been done repeatedly through the years, to include the most modern research on the species. The amended paragraph I provided in my second post does this reasonably well. I apologise that this is taking up your time, but to me this seems like a very appropriate update to the research section, at least more appropriate than TED talks which are not research. Thank you again for your consideration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Memory-donk (talk • contribs) 04:15, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. Part of the problem is that the article could use a solid literature review to bring it up to date.

Updating the "current research" section here to include your own research needs to be handled under Wikipedia's conflict of interest guidelines.  Please read these.  

My gut feeling, for what it's worth, is that summarising the result in another section, using your paper, would be more acceptable, as a third-party source would be needed to say 'this genome paper is important in the field of modern thylacine research'. (If this is not how the others are treated, then perhaps that's wrong.)

Alternatively, a literature review and rewrite of the "current research" section to include all the relevant strands and competing theories (as in Homo floresiensis) may be acceptable.

Was your research done on a Tasmanian thylacine, or a mainlander? Perhaps the information on the decline in effective population size and population structures (not sure which type of pop. structure is referenced here - if we wikilink technical terms, then the text is better for our general audience) could be presented in the extinction section ( Thylacine#Extinction) instead?

Hope this helps, @Memory-donk:. --122.108.141.214 (talk) 05:27, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi @122.108.141.214. Thank you again for your suggestion. My understanding of the Modern research section based on what has been added since I started watching this page in ~2009, is that it is simply describing what the modern studies on the thylacine have been. There doesn't seem to be any mention of the relatively importance of any research in this section. I was very careful not to make any claims regarding importance of the study because it is my own work. I was also careful to declared myself as an author up front in my initial edit request...

"As a disclaimer, I am an author on the paper. I am happy to have an established Wikipedia user amend the text or correct the markup as they see fit."

...and rather than using my full name as has been done for every other researcher mentioned in the section, I used Feigin et al., the standard way of referring to a paper with multiple authors.

I have looked over the COI guidelines and am very confident that neither of my suggested paragraphs are problematic. The COI guidelines provide suggestions for what editors should consider when handling both paid and unpaid COIs in the section Dealing with edit requests from COI or paid editors. I have made a disclosure of COI (happy to add the appropriate markup), I amended the paragraph to remove unnecessary detail, I have not left out important details (for a lay audience), I have avoided non-neutral language (if I am wrong about that please help me improve it), I included no personal websites and I am unpaid. Moreover, the guidelines explicitly state that using material that you have published is allowed within reason, but only if it is relevant (based on other material in Modern research it certainly is relevant) and is not excessive (the first more technical version is < 200 words and the second non-technical version is less than 90 words, added to a >5000 word article).

Both versions of the paragraph are compose of matter-of-fact statements that a genome sequence had been published in W journal and that X, Y and Z were done (the second version probably being more appropriate for the encyclopedia). I don't believe its necessary for a third party source to confirm that this is modern research as it is both modern (2017) and verifiably peer-reviewed research (Nature E&E). As this is the first genome analysis of the thylacine, there are no current competing theories on the genetic basis of its convergence with canids, but naturally they would also constitute modern research and would also be appropriate for this section.

As I said initially, I would be perfectly happy with another editor updating the article appropriately to reflect that a new study has been published, as long as the information is accurately reported. Placing an update in the modern research section without qualifiers of importance seems like the best way to avoid a problematic COI. It just seems bizarre to me that every genetic paper on the thylacine that has ever been published would be included in the modern research section except for the genome paper. It may be my own failing, but I can not grasp why this paper would be the only paper that would not belong in the same section.

To answer your other questions, the individual sequenced was a Tasmanian specimen, but Tasmania was only isolated ~14,000 years ago, and the demography covers much earlier times than that (i.e. when the mainland and Tasmanian populations were one). I did wikilink the technical terms in my original paragraph and also described the nature of the population structure, but it was deemed too technical by the previous editor, so I removed mention of those details (personally I don't think it was so technical given that wikipedia has good articles for each of the technical topics I had previously linked to). Finally, as I tried to explain before, there is no relationship between loss of diversity/extinction and the PSMC analysis we did. That was the thing that was misreported in the popsci press. PSMC covers the time prior to the separation of Tasmania and again, does not reflect loss of genetic diversity that contributed to extinction. The paper does not study any factors related to the thylacine's extinction so I don't believe that it would make sense to put it in the extinction section.

For your reference I've re-copied the two suggested paragraphs below.

First suggested version (more technical plus wikilinks): A draft genome sequence of the thylacine was produced by Feigin et al. using the DNA extracted of an ethanol-preserved pouch young specimen provided by Museums Victoria. Their work was published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution in 2017. Analysis of Retroposon presence/absence patterns supported the basal position of the thylacine within the order Dasyuromorphia and showed considerable incomplete lineage sorting within this clade. Demographic analyses using MSMC suggested that the thylacine had undergone a decline in effective population size, predating the arrival of humans in Australia. However, the researchers noted that similar signals could be the product of a population structure characterised by a large number of demes with low migration, which is highly plausible for a large dispersed predator. Comparative genomic and morphometric analyses revealed that in spite of the morphological convergence between the thylacine (a marsupial) and placental canids, that key developmental genes did not show signatures of adaptive convergence. Rather, they suggested that changes in cis-regulatory regions are more likely drivers of thylacine-canid convergence.

Second suggested version (non-technical): A draft genome sequence of the thylacine was produced by Feigin et al. using the DNA extracted of an ethanol-preserved pouch young specimen provided by Museums Victoria. Their work was published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution in 2017. Researchers used the genome to study aspects of the thylacine's evolution and natural history, including the genetic basis of its convergence with canids, clarifying its evolutionary relationships with other marsupials and examining changes in its population size over time.

• Rather than lump it all in a "research" section, the information given in the paper should be spun off to relevant sections of the article. Information about evolution, behaviour, and affinities belong in the sections about these subjects. Putting the information in its proper context will also make it more understandable, and we will prevent having a wall of text summarising an entire paper in one paragraph. FunkMonk (talk) 15:45, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

@FunkMonk I agree and I would be happy to do so in the near future with help/input from other interested editors. For the moment I was updating the information in article to be current, and to do so in a way that best fits with its present structure. The Modern research and projects section has been in this article since at least 2009, so the article is probably overdue for a reformat. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Memory-donk (talk • contribs) 09:12, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

References

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Semi-protected edit request on 30 January 2018

PLEASE CHANGE

"Despite its official classification as extinct, sightings are still reported, though none has been conclusively proven."

TO

"Despite its official classification as extinct, sightings are still reported, though none have been conclusively proven.

Because the grammar Is incorrect "It should be HAVE not HAS"

Thank you. 88.109.36.61 (talk) 19:32, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

 Done And thank you for noticing the error. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:21, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Still alive?

On this website (http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2013/11/13/2003576781) says that the Tasmanian tiger is still alive, but is it true because my friend said not enough proof? Dinosaur Fan (talk) 07:15, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Your friend is right to be sceptical, there is no hard evidence that the thylacine survives to the present day. The article notes that the study was done by the Centre for Fortean Zoology which is not a formal academic body. Mountain^cirque 09:25, 17 November 2014 (UTC)there is a home vidio of one in 2012 cold be fake but looks pretty real quite promising!

They are currently on a search. Since it was reported extinct there have been at least 600 sightings Darkprophet3 (talk) 21:02, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 February 2018

I request to add a new paragraph to the end of the section titled "Modern research and projects", describing the recent study investigating the development of thylacine pouch young specimens using micro computed-tomography published in Royal Society Open Science . I am the lead author on the paper. We also have some excellent images that will help contribute to the wiki.

References

Thanks, Axel Newton DarthGarren (talk) 00:57, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

DarthGarren, this certainly would go well in that section. Do you want to whip up 2-3 sentences on the findings? If I understand the image situation correctly, all images from the paper are already suitably licensed for use on Wikipedia, and would just need to be uploaded to Commons via the upload wizard. As the article is quite heavy on the images already, I would think that not more than one new image should go in at this time. Maybe Fig. 2? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 06:28, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

• Appears to have already been answered and waiting for a response from the proposer. Addicted4517 (talk) 04:14, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

 Done Inserted by author, image sorted. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 09:19, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Crash Bandicoot?

Should I add that Tiny the Tiger from the crash bandicoot video game series is a thyclaine in the cultural references section? 71.108.65.190 (talk) 18:13, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think so; it doesn't seem very noteworthy. For some good guidelines, see: WP:POPCULTURE, WP:N, and WP:V. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 20:40, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

No it’s a queensland tiger.

Erinthylacine (talk) 08:45, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Timeline of Thylacine evolution

The first paragraph in the article says: "evolving about 400 million years ago" - the date is certainly wrong. Hopefully somebody can indicate the right date.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.28.192.12 (talk • contribs)

Fixed.--Mr Fink (talk) 03:52, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

My bad. Thanks for the fix. Regards, IiKkEe (talk) 23:23, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

Useless subheadings

Someone just divided the article into a gazilion subsections, against clear guidelines that say single paragraph/sentence sections should be avoided. It would be appreciated if whoever did this could revert themselves, instead of leaving the rest of us to clean up the mess. FunkMonk (talk) 14:24, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Hmm. That was done end of January already; didn't really register. I'd agree that no real purpose is served by this over-splitting, it bloats the ToC, and looks plain awkward in the text. IiKkEe, I'd also support undoing that modification. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:01, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I wonder if we could just do a deep revert, was anything of use even added since? FunkMonk (talk) 18:16, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, several items. Sorry to be an impediment. OTOH, if you do a deep revert, then a comparison between the two versions you will see what all I added. Or you can just edit each section and edit out manually the subsections. A fairly straight forward process, I think. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 18:19, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

If you are willing to do the task, of course. It is quit annoying when stuff like that is left for others to fix. FunkMonk (talk) 18:23, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I chopped all the subsections under the Characteristics section. Easy easy lemon squeezy.

I don't think the remaining subsections are problematical. But that is just my opinion. Your mileage may vary. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 18:24, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, not quite as easy it seems, whoever did this seems to have rearranged sections as well (now the text on taxonomy is at the bottom of the article instead of with the other classification info at the top, for example), and chopped up the description section into tiny paragraphs. It seems it will be a bit more nitty gritty to restore the previous structure. FunkMonk (talk) 18:28, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't do any of that (on either end). A comparison of particular edits in the history should show the changes and what we need to move. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 18:30, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I reconstructed some of the previous structure. Still needs some work, such as the hyper-split sentences of description, and I don't see why we need tiny sections on individual research articles, when most of this should be covered under behaviour or description. FunkMonk (talk) 15:57, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed the subheadings under "Research". I generally like that section, which has a lot of content that would be difficult to incorporate in other places but is of interest. It's still in chronological order, which should do. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:38, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Distribution map

The map doesn't say whether it's the green region or the grey region which is the range of the animal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.141.24.95 (talk) 11:20, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Cryptozoology, Pseudoscience and Subculture

Earlier today, a user made this rather angry edit on the article space. Evidently the user's contention is that because I used the terms "pseudoscience" and "subculture" to describe the, well, pseudoscience and subculture for the reader, I am projecting negative feelings into this article. The problem is, of course, that cryptozoology's status as both a pseudoscience is extremely well referenced over at cryptozoology, and widely known in the academic community (where they've heard of the obscure world of cryptozoology, that is). I've asked the user to self-revert ([2]), but this has so far yielded only further anger aimed in my direction. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:55, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

While cryptozoology indeed is a pseudoscience, and cryptozoologists fairly can be described as forming a subculture, I agree with the other editor's assessment that it is unnecessary to add those two adjectives to modify the term "cryptozoology" when the term is linked to a Wikipedia article that describes cryptozoology more completely. Do you really believe that the absence of those two adjectives would lead readers to believe that cryptozoology is an actual branch of science? As for whether the other editor exhibited lack of civility with his explanation of why he eliminated the two adjectives as unnecessary, I assume that there must be some past history between you two, because I didn't find your edit, taken in isolation, as projecting negative feelings.

By the way, I also disagree with your elimination of two examples of cryptozoology books that discuss the thylacine. Those books weren't cited as sources of the truth of what they claim, but as evidence that, indeed, some cryptozoologists have taken an interest in speculation that the thylacine may be extant. WP:FRINGE does not prohibit citing proponents of fringe theories when the whole point of the sentence is that proponents of fringe theories have taken an interest in something. I'd be interested in hearing what other members of the editing community think of the deletion of those two sources. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 23:24, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

• Awesome. Look, I think we are all aware that to serve information to the reader, a wikilink does not require two subsidiary links to accompany it. As a little demonstration, grabbing a random well-referenced paragraph from this article and giving it this treatment looks like this:

In 2017, Berns and Ashwell published comparative cortical maps, areas of minicolumns in the brain, of thylacine and Tasmanian devil (another carnivorous marsupial) brains, showing that the thylacine had a larger, more modularized basal ganglion, a group of subcortical nuclei. [...] The same year, White, Mitchell and Austin published a large-scale analysis of thylacine mitochondrial genomes, showing that they had split into Eastern and Western populations on the mainland prior to the Last Glacial Maximum, the most recent period of maximal ice sheet extent, and had low genetic diversity by the time of European arrival, the point at which European explorers reached the continent.

Why don't we do this? Because it's unnecessary - providing this information is the point of hypertext. You don't know the term, you click the link. (And no, cryptozoology is not a super-arcane term; nor would this approach be necessary even then.)

Why does bloodofox feel it is desirable to do so for cryptozoology anyway? Because they want to make sure that the reader comes away with a specific connotation of the area as early as possible. With respect to creating an NPOV text, this is somewhat sharp tactics verging on playing dirty.

Now if I am (apparently) sounding "angry", that is because I am exasperated. This isn't our first turn around the mulberry bush. I'm an ecological modeller; I hate anecdotal occurrence data. But I am repeatedly finding myself in a position like that of the average everyday atheist who is confronted with Richard Dawkins - you are in the same boat, you have the same aims, you just wish that the other guy wasn't such a scenery-smashing zealot about it. We can produce factual and mainstream-congruent articles without bending WP:NPOV. And adding extra "scare links" to one special wikilink is bending NPOV.

That's as much steam as I'm willing to expend on that point. If the community at large is happy with bloodofox's techniques, then by all means use them, I just think that every so often it's worth testing if that's actually the case. Over to everyone else.

About the removal of the two sources, we've been through that as well, multiple times, unfortunately without a clear consensus emerging. Some people believe that "in-universe" cryptozoology sources are fine for demonstrating that the field is interested in the animal, if not for any factual statements. Others (bloodofox included) will only allow sources that are actual scientific publications, or outspoken criticisms of the entire area. My repeated requests for an RfC about this continue to be turned down as "unnecessary", and so we get one of these tussles after the other. Hey-ho. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 03:27, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree with the above, it is well stated. Elmidae's responses here have been appropriate. The reaction by bloodofox was inappropriate. I thought my edit to the sentence would satisfy most readers, yet bloodofox lectures me about copyright violation; if I never get into trouble for that, bloodofox gets full credit for making that happen? Anyway …

I disagree, or am ignorant where I should not be, or I am misreading something: the fact in the last sentence in the quotation from the article seems to suggest the thylacine disappeared from the mainland several hundred years ago. cygnis insignis 08:29, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

What I think being irrelevant, as I'm reminded just now, here is the abstract and conclusions cited in the article. Just something muddled in a copyedit? cygnis insignis 08:38, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

• I agree this behaviour is getting ridiculous (see also bottom of the Steller's sea cow talk page). We can't remove sources left and right before it is established that they are unfit for use at some wider forum. FunkMonk (talk) 06:05, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
• I cannot support either of Bloodofox's complaints. First point: I see absolutely nothing 'angry' in Elmidae's edit summary that Bloodofox has taken exception to, except to note what we all of us know: that plain text cannot carry emotion and that a simple sentence can be read in many different ways, according to the views/perspective of the recipient. But angry it was not, and the complaint of a failure of Civility on Elmidae's page was equally misjudged and unnecessary by Bloodofox. Using WP:CIVIL as a means to push against another editor to achieve one's own editing aims, so as to get reverted edits reinstated, seems somewhat underhand.

Second point: Bloodofox was not improving the article by inserting a clause after the wikilinked term 'cryptozoology', (namely, that it is "a pseudoscience and subculture) and is now wrong to complain here in this way about its removal, and then to seek consensus to reinstate it. As a term, cryptozoology is wikilinked to a very clearly-described page, and any user with Page Preview still enabled will see immediately, when they hover over the word, that it is indeed a pseudoscience.

Third point, and one where I'm possibly in support of Bloodofox's perspective: Quite why cryptozoology is given such prominence in this article viz-a-viz the existence of current Tasmanian Government legislation which still provides full legal protection to the Thylacine under the current Threatened Species Protection Act 1995, I really fail to understand. Despite being declared extinct, and being removed from CITES listing a while ago, I note that, as at September 2018, Thylacinus cynocephalus is still listed in Schedule 13 Part 2 of that 1995 Act (see here and here) and thus is still legally protected. Further investigation of Tasmanian legislation shows that the Thylacine was also included in a list of 'extinct in the wild' species under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) (see here). I'm not sure if that totally supersedes the 1995 legislation, but it is clear that the Thylacine still benefits from legal protection today. (e.g. were one to be discovered today, and then trapped or shot, it would be an offence; setting out to trap one to prove its existence would also be illegal, I believe)

Now, I have no particular strong interest in either this marsupial's article (other than I once had to identify its skull in a professional exam for my Museums Diploma) or in promoting cryptozoology, but it seems to me the mention and emphasis of cyptozoology itself is counter-intuitive. This was a real living organism, that did exist until it was extirpated relatively recently - it's no folklore species like bigfoot. That a few cranky pseudobiologists have appropriated the Thylacine (presumably to give their pseudoscience a bit more credibility?) only seems worthy of the briefest of passing mention in the article, whereas the changing status, the remaining and legal protection under current Australian legislation, plus the history of failed searches up to the 1980s merits far more. I would suggest a text entry (with supporting references, of course) along these lines:

Due to the uncertainty of whether the species is still extant or not, the thylacine is regarded by some as a cryptid, nevertheless, as at September 2018, it remains listed as an extinct species but still benefits from having the full legal protection of the Tasmanian Government under Schedule 13 Part 2 of the Threatened Species Protection Act 1995, plus the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

Regards, Nick Moyes (talk) 13:01, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

I second the motion to add a paragraph on current legal protections of thylacine by the Tasmanian government in case the species is not extinct. AuH2ORepublican (talk) 16:32, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

The sources bloodofox removed are not reliable. We should not be citing books by Loren Coleman on articles like this. I wouldn't have a problem if those references were removed but I agree about removing the pseudoscience and subculture comment, it is obvious from the cryptozoology article that is linked to, so no point in repeating it. Psychologist Guy (talk) 16:35, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Errol Fuller's opinion as fact and undue emphasis

While cryptozoology apparently still has its proponents on Wikipedia ready to demand that the pseudoscience or subculture not be referred to as well, a pseudoscience or subculture (cue wall of personal attacks aimed at yours truly from proponents), it is under no circumstance acceptable to attribute an opinion as fact on Wikipedia. Let's please be mindful of this (e.g., [3]).

Secondly, isn't all this text about the pseudoscience undue emphasis and an over emphasis on a particular writer's opinion? We're talking about a tiny subculture of pseudoscience proponents here, vastly over-represented on the internet. :bloodofox: (talk) 16:51, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Glad you found the time to dismiss everything said above as "personal attacks" and label everyone as "cryptozoology proponents"; that gives me real confidence that we won't have to go through this again on a monthly basis for the forseeable future. - Regarding attributing statements to specific proponents, that is no more than proper and your latest edit seems entirely sensible. As for length, three short sentences with two references is hardly disproportionate coverage in an article of this length and detail. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:04, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. As always, stick to reliable sources and we won't have a problem. Opinions from the those outside of the usual cryptozoology apologetics crew also welcome. :bloodofox: (talk) 17:08, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Anyone whose sources are not quotes of the inversion of tinfoil hats claiming cryptozoology to the other way around. Pseudoscepticism, in another age it would rooting out and burning heresy, simpler times, all coming back into fashion I hear. cygnis insignis 17:22, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

I know—those pesky academics, always getting in the way, right? :bloodofox: (talk) 17:37, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

I see it as controlling the narrative, for a self sourced opinion, and, as another pointed out, tarring your nominated opponents, sometimes well intentioned users with justifiable contributions, and dismissing any qualified facts to retroactively justify a personal campaign and the incivility that entailed. That is how I view your contributions to discussion, you have assumed a license to edit war and that regular processes are exempt when you declare FRINGE in big blue letters. It is so average, and a waste of everyone's time. cygnis insignis 16:44, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Solution: find reliable sources and then you won't feel the need to resort to posting ridiculous stuff like this. :bloodofox: (talk) 16:55, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Get over yourself, and your bigoted judgement of cannot be a reliable source, I provide reliably sourced content and your comments are know-nothing bluster. cygnis insignis 17:09, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Unconfirmed Sightings Section: Very Poor Sources

Although this is a FA-class article, currently in the "Unconfirmed Sightings" section, we have the following sources:

• Tasmanian-tiger.com, complete with bolded comic sans stating "THIS IS WHERE WE BEGAN TO BE SUSPICIOUS OF THE STATE GOVERNMENT'S AGENDA" ([4])
• TheThylacineVideos (6 November 2009). "Film of a Possible Thylacine – South Australia, 1973" (Video) – via YouTube.
• Hall, Phil (16 February 2007). "The Bootleg Files: "Footage of the Last Thylacine"". Film Threat. Retrieved 14 February 2009. (dead link)
• Davis, M.K. (8 July 2013). "M K Davis discusses the 1973 film of a Thylacine on the mainland of Australia" (Video). Retrieved 3 April 2019 – via YouTube.
• Thylacine Awareness Group of Australia (16 September 2016). "Thylacine Sighting – Western Victoria 2008" (Video) – via YouTube.

Most, if not all of these, are obvious WP:RS fails that fall in the territory of WP:FRINGE (and no doubt falls under WP:UNDUE). If we're going to keep the information sourced to these items, we're going to need to find reliable sources (and there are plenty). Otherwise it just all needs to go. :bloodofox: (talk) 16:22, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

The New Scientist? Really? It's a rag, full of scientific distortions. Doesn't qualify as an RS, even if occasionally they have a good article.50.111.3.59 (talk) 14:39, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

The Reliable sources discussion board holds New Scientist to be generally reliable, with a little need to be careful about very contentious claims, but I don't think the claim is contentious - it gets reported in the BBC wildlife book, for example [5], and the New Scientist link lets readers easily look up the pictures themselves, which has obvious value. WilyD 13:45, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

I added a line in the Unconfirmed Sightings section to reflect Business Insider's article on the Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment report of recent unconfirmed sightings. It's at least a reliable source for covering official public record. TheRedReverend (talk) 18:37, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Dead link

Hi All,

The link in the Citations list, currently numbered as 55, is a dead link. However, a search of the mother site (The National Museum of Australia) does show the article on a functional page.

Current Wiki link:

"Mummified thylacine has national message". National Museum of Australia, Canberra. 16 June 2004. Archived from the original on 10 November 2013. Retrieved 21 November 2006.

Here is the link to the article on the Museum's website:

Mummified thylacine has national message | National Museum of Australia https://www.nma.gov.au/about/media/media-releases-listing-by-year/2004/mummified-thylacine-has-national-message

I don't know if this is an HTML error on the article page, or if the Museum simply moved the article to a different URL on its website. At any rate, I don't know how to correct it. Could someone with more Wiki editing experience pls correct the link on the article page? Thanks. SaturnCat (talk) 05:06, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Done! Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 06:00, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

"Extirpated"

@Ddum5347: While the term "extirpated" is used in scientific literature for local extinctions without an implication of intentional destruction of the species, Wikipedia has a general readership, so most readers would assume that the common meaning of "extirpated" was implied. The Random House Dictionary defines "extirpate" as "to remove or destroy totally; do away with; exterminate." Thus, to a general reader, seeing that the thylacine was "extirpated" in the Australian mainland would be interpreted as someone having exterminated the entirety of the population. That is not what occurred--the Aborigines did not hunt the thylacine to extinction in the mainland (nor kill it off to protect livestock, as European settlers later did in Tasmania). That is why "became extinct" is better wording for a general readership than "extirpated." AuH2ORepublican (talk) 12:17, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Ddum5347 really needs to stop drive-by changing every other article to their personal liking. I'm seeing these disruptive edits everywhere. You need to begin using talk pages before making controversial edits.- FunkMonk (talk) 14:27, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

"Extirpated" in a biological context means local extinction. While most extirpations happen due to human activity, not all of them do. I really don't understand why this is so hard to understand. Ddum5347 (talk) 18:23, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

@Ddum5347: It seems that you did not read my comment above, in which I said that "extirpated" can be used in scientific literature to refer to local extinctions without controversy, but that a Wikipedia article has general readership and thus the unambiguous term "became extinct" would be preferable. Let me repeat what I wrote:

While the term "extirpated" is used in scientific literature for local extinctions without an implication of intentional destruction of the species, Wikipedia has a general readership, so most readers would assume that the common meaning of "extirpated" was implied. The Random House Dictionary defines "extirpate" as "to remove or destroy totally; do away with; exterminate." Thus, to a general reader, seeing that the thylacine was "extirpated" in the Australian mainland would be interpreted as someone having exterminated the entirety of the population. That is not what occurred--the Aborigines did not hunt the thylacine to extinction in the mainland (nor kill it off to protect livestock, as European settlers later did in Tasmania). That is why "became extinct" is better wording for a general readership than "extirpated." AuH2ORepublican (talk) 18:41, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Ddum5347 has form in repeatedly changing extinct to extirpated in many articles (e.g. see his edit-warring at List of mammals of South Australia). I raised this issue with him in this request on his talk page, quoting definitions from two reputable dictionaries (the Collins English Dictionary and the Macquarie Concise Dictionary). In the discussion @Nick Moyes: also raised his concerns, but unfortunately Ddum5347 has a habit of responding to criticism by blanking his talk page.

FWIW, here's the Wiktionary definition of wikt:extirpate, which gives as synonyms: annihilate, destroy, eradicate, exterminate, all of which also carry connotations of, or imply, direct human involvement and intention in wiping out a species.

While instances of the use of "extirpated" may occasionally have occurred in scientific literature, Ddum5347 has failed to provide a reliable source to back up his claims that extirpated is synonymous with the neutral term locally extinct, without it carrying these implications. Bahudhara (talk) 02:14, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Extirpate meaning locally extinct is common in scientific literature, and this discussion actually reminded me of the negative connotations. That said, in the particular use case here I don't see it as any more clear than "extinct in". CMD (talk) 03:36, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Extirpated definitely implies active removal of a species by man (whether intentional or accidental, such as over-collection/predator control), wheras extinct/locally extinct is a much more passive and neutral descriptor, and aleo far better understood, too. I would require a WP:RS to clearly show that direct and intentional human intervention had led to extinction via extirpation (and not just via habitat loss, general decline, or natural disaster) and I must comment that I very rarely see 'extirpated' used in the literature that I access. (I am keenly aware of its deployment, as I used it intentionally as a status qualifier only once in the Flora I publshed, specifically relating to the loss of one highly collectable orchid species in my region. Many other taxa had also since become 'locally extinct', but no others merited use of that word. But in all cases, the status code would have been the same, or else it would have rendered status lists too confusing'). I do not agree with Ddum5347's view of how the word can be used. I will also block any editor where evidence of edit-warring is clearly presented if it avoids disruption and personal opinions being insinuated into articles. Nick Moyes (talk) 07:36, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

You need a reliable source? Page 60: https://archive.org/details/conservationbiog00ladl/page/60/mode/2up?q=extirpation. You cling to dictionary definitions too much Ddum5347 (talk) 07:56, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Even in this ref that Ddum5347 provides, "local extinction" appears as the preferred term, and "extirpation" is enclosed in single quotation marks, so it's hardly a good example to support his argument. Bahudhara (talk) 22:37, 30 January 2021 (UTC)