It has long been believed that Benjamin, a male Tasmanian tiger, was the last surviving member of this extinct species of striped marsupial.
However, new evidence confirms that three years after Benjamin’s death, an elderly female of the same species was still alive, marking the true extinction of this species and that her remains were hiding from plain sight, Live Science reported on Monday, a local Arabic daily reported curators of the Tasmanian Museum and Gallery in Australia who made this amazing discovery while searching for the remains of the female Tasmanian tiger in the museum’s storage, where they found its skin and bones in a closet.
For some time, the specimen, which curators didn’t realize was the last known recorded Tasmanian tiger, had traveled to area schools to conduct educational demonstrations on the anatomy of the Tasmanian tiger, according to a museum statement.
In 1936, a hunter named Elias Churchill captured the female and sold her to the Hobart Zoo, where she soon died. The zoo donated the remains of the Tasmanian tiger to the museum, but in the nearly 90 years since the exchange, the specimen’s whereabouts were unknown, adding to its obscurity for zoologists.
On the other hand, Benjamin died three years earlier, in 1933, while also in captivity, making him the penultimate survivor of his species.
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