The 1930 Mawbanna Thylacine: The evidence and photographic legacy of the last confirmed wild kill.

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]