Pelt of a Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger), which was shot in the Pieman River - Zeehan area of Tasmania in 1930
Object type
Specimens
Object number
1999.0016.0001
Description
Thylacine skin (Tasmanian Tiger). It has beige-brown fur, and the tail is missing. There is darker fur on the back with fourteen distinct darker stripes. No fur is on the ears which are orange brown. The proper left side has two guard hairs, the proper right side has five guard hairs. The lower back has a straight edge split ten centimetres long and also has three small patches of fur shaved or cut. There are holes both sides on the trunk behind the forelegs, also small holes from the tanning process around the edge of skin. The proper left rear leg has a five centimetre split. There are two bald areas in front of the rear legs on trunk.
Collection name
Charles Selby Wilson collection
Collection statement of significance
The European settlement of Australia was marked by a wave of extinctions of native species. The Tasmanian tiger or thylacine is one of the best examples of this process and in the popular and scientific imagination this animal has becomeemblematic of historical extinctions. The Wilson thylacine skin is the tanned skin of an adult thylacine - retaining the distinctive dark brown stripes across the rear part of the animal. It was caught by Mr Wilson in the Pieman River area of northwestern in 1930 where Wilson worked as a surveyor. It therefore represents one of the last of the wild thylacines. Charles Selby Wilson was a resident of Zeehan at this time and the only 'Wilson' whose occupation is listed as 'surveyor' in Tasmania in 1930. The Pieman River area is central to the history ofthe thylacine. The earliest of the thylacine bounty systems was initiated in the nearby Surrey Hills Land Grant by the Van Dieman's Land Company in 1836. When in 1928 the Tasmanian Advisory Committee for Native Fauna recommended that the thylacine be protected it was the area between the Arthur and Pieman Rivers that was recommended as a potential reserve for thylacines. The last authenticated capture of a wild thylacine was in September 1930 at Mawbanna - also in north west Tasmania.
Collector
Charles S. Wilson
Associated organisation
Tasmanian Lands Department
Place collected
Pieman River, TAS, Australia
Place collected
Zeehan, TAS, Australia
Date collected
1930
Materials
Animal hide
Dimensions
Length: 1410mm
Width: 920mm
Height: 110mm
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