Only about 60 of these wombats survive in a reserve located in Epping State Forest, not far from Emerald, Queensland.  The researchers at Monash plan to insert nuclei from the Northern hairy-nosed wombat into oocytes from its much more numerous South Australian relation, the Southern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus latifrons).     However, the wombat project has already been preceded by half a decade of study to better understand the southern species' breeding cycle.  Similar comprehensive knowledge of the breeding cycles of quolls or devils would be prerequisite before any attempt is made to put a thylacine embryo into either of these species.

. A female Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) with two young.  Like Dasyurus, Sarcophilus is another of the thylacine's closest living relatives.  It is hoped that a way will eventually be found to enable this species to serve as a surrogate mother for thylacine embryos created in the laboratory.  However, a study must first be performed to learn the specifics of the Tasmanian devil's reproductive cycle.  The more that is known about its biology from the start, the greater the chance of a successful surrogate program.

    Lastly, there is the genetic diversity factor to consider.  A single cloned thylacine would essentially be an object of curiosity brought into existence through technology, merely the first step on a long road towards the ultimate goal of reintroducing the species to parts of its former range.

    Prof. Short's wife, Marilyn Renfree, professor of zoology at Melbourne University, states that there is probably a sufficient amount of genetic material contained in alcohol preserved thylacine tissues in Australia, Europe and the US to create the necessary genetic diversity to re-establish a viable population with a low risk of inbreeding.

    Renfree has procured small tissue samples from the four preserved thylacine young at the Museum of Victoria, and plans to clone some of the genes into mice.  "I suppose that in the future it might be possible to sequence the entire thylacine genome, and reconstruct it, but that's real Jurassic Park stuff," says Renfree.
 

. A thylacine taxidermy at the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale in Genoa,  Italy.  This specimen dates from 1883.

Even Dr. Michael Archer admits that his dream is a long shot: "You can pontificate until you're purple on the difficulties of doing it, but our feeling is: Why wait for someone else?"     There remains of course a very important and intriguing question which hangs over all such hope and speculation: is the thylacine actually extinct?  Many scientists - including Archer - feel that the thylacine has probably been extinct for nearly 70 years.  Others however, such as Professor Henry Nix, former director of the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at the Australian National University, aren't quite so sure that the animal is gone.

    For Nix, the pattern of sightings in northern Tasmania, and in the area around Wilson's Promontory in far southern Victoria, is intriguingly non-random.

    In the early 1990s, Nix compiled all available records of thylacine trappings and shootings during the late 1800s, when the government of Tasmania placed a bounty on the thylacine, an accused predator of sheep.