Forgotten Fauna Part 21: Thylacine and Devil stories on the mainland – a reminder of Australia’s ecology long before the arrival of the dingo

Back in Part 16 of the Forgotten Fauna series of blogs, we touched on the story of Australia’s apex marsupial carnivores, which occupied the terrestrial environments of the mainland for most of its recent evolutionary history, until the relatively recent arrival of the dingo.

Over the past few weeks, I have been reminded of this topic by a couple of interesting stories that highlight the story of the Thylacine and Devil on the mainland, including how long they were part of mainland ecology and just how recently (in both a practical and an evolutionary sense) they disappeared.

For example, in late March the ABC shared an interesting story about preserved Thylacine footprints on SA’s Eyre Peninsula, that their research indicates are between 110,000 and 130,000 years old. If you’d like to read this fascinating story then please click here, or on the image below.

Then only a week or two later, some fascinating stories about the latest published rock art research in Arnhem land, which depicts the Thylacine and Devil, appeared in The Conversation and ABC News.

Of note, the researchers have found that some of the depictions of the Thylacine in this part of northern Australia were painted within the last 1000 years, which is much more recent than previous estimates of when the species became extinct on the mainland. Researchers have also encountered far more depictions of the Thylacine (160 images) across Australia than of Devils (25 images), which could tell us about their differential distribution, abundance, rates of decline or cultural significance.

The fact that both Thylacines and Devils clearly occurred in the tropics for so long, until so recently, I think should also challenge our preconceptions about these species being somehow specifically ‘cool climate adapted’, simply because (by a quirk of fate – i.e. the timing of sea level rise after the last ice age flooding the land bridge to Tasmania) they were saved from competition with dingoes in Tasmania.

If you are keen to learn more, I’d encourage you to read the longer version article in The Conversation, by clicking on the image above, or you can view the full academic research paper here (which is also shown in the pdf viewer below).