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The last confirmed wild Thylacine kill, that of an adult male, was made by Wilfred Batty on a property leased by his father in the Parish of Anderson, within the Mawbanna district on the north-west coast of Tasmania, at midday on the 13th of May 1930. In terms of the historical traceability of the species in the wild, the shooting of the Mawbanna Thylacine, the first of only four evidentially supported specimens recovered during the 1930s, antedates the capture of the two Delphin juveniles by 55 and 83-89 days respectively, the male of which being the only credible candidate for the last captive Thylacine (Linnard et al., 2020; Linnard & Sleightholme, 2023). It also predates the 1931 Kaine capture (Sleightholme et al., 2020), the final evidentially supported occasion when a Thylacine was retrieved from the wild by approximately nine months. A contemporary newspaper article provided a brief account of the kill with the incident becoming synonymous with the trophy image of Batty posed with the dead Thylacine. However, before his death in 1989 Batty's testimony was recorded by three detailed sources - McIntyre (1955), Thompson (1974) and Ryghe (1990), allowing a more nuanced understanding of the circumstances surrounding the kill. Additionally, this publication introduces three previously unseen photographs, allowing all the known images of the kill to be sequenced, attributed, and their context discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Thylacine or 'Tasmanian tiger' (Thylacinus cynocephalus), an iconic canid-like marsupial predator and last member of its taxonomic family (Thylacinidae) to have survived to modern times, was declared officially extinct in the early 1980s, half a century after the death of the last captive animal. However, the regularity and frequency of sightings of the species over more than eight decades since has not only created a zoological mystery, but also made it challenging to reconstruct the timeline of the fate of the species. To help resolve this intriguing historical-ecological problem, we compiled and curated a comprehensive inventory of documented sighting records from Tasmania from 1910 to 2019. By examining sources spanning official archives, published reports, museum collections, newspaper articles, microfilm, contemporary correspondence, private collections and other miscellaneous citations and testimony, we have amassed 1,223 unique Thylacine records from this period and resolved previous anomalies and duplications. Each observation in the database is dated, geo-tagged, categorised, quality-rated, referenced and linked to an image of its source material. Although purported observations have occurred every year, reporting rates vary across the decades in terms of frequency, type, location, and quality rating. Here we describe the database in detail, highlight its value for research, interpret the major patterns revealed by this archival compilation, and discuss the broader implications of the result of this work on the likely time and place of the Thylacine's extinction in the wild. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last known captive Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) died at the Beaumaris Zoo on Hobart's Queen's Domain on the evening of Monday the 7th September 1936. However, within six months of its death the date of its capture was being inaccurately reported. Over the ensuing years there has been much debate and controversy relating to its source, sex, period of display, welfare, and more recently the fate of its remains. Whilst there has been some agreement, significant confusion has been created by the disparate, fragmentary, and often contradictory sources of evidence, with five distinctly exclusive provenances proposed for this specimen. For a species whose extinction was hastened by anthropogenic interventions, we have a moral obligation to preserve as much factual detail as possible about the Thylacine. To this end, the authors have undertaken a thorough review of the hypotheses advanced by Smith (1981) & Paddle (2000); Guiler (1986) & Bailey (2001); Sleightholme et al., 2020; Linnard et al., 2020 and Paddle & Medlock (2023), and have evaluated each against a synthesis of the evidence accrued over the previous 93 years to examine whether a definitive identification and history of the last known captive Thylacine can be determined. The authors found a sufficiently strong correlation between the evidence and the position advanced by Linnard et al., (2020) to maintain that the last captive Thylacine can be identified as the juvenile male captured at Penney's Flats on the Arthur River by 19 year old Roy and 59 year old Dan Delphin on the evening of Monday 7th July 1930. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a companion to the Thylacine Image Registry (Sleightholme & Campbell, 2021), the authors present the first comprehensive catalogue of the thirteen known motion picture films of the Thylacine or Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus). The films date from 1911 to 1935, are all black and white, and range from 5 to 59 seconds in duration. The authors provide detail on the content and history behind each of the films, the cinematographers responsible for their creation, the locations in which they were filmed, and the identity, or probable identity, of each of the Thylacines shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]