Tasmanian tiger skin

Charles Selby Wilson collection

Tasmanian tiger skin

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 known examples of this process and in the popular and scientific imagination this animal has become emblematic 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 north-western Tasmania 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 of the 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. The Wilson skin is rare. It had been in the possession of the Wilson's family or descendants right up until 1987.