In the early 1990s, Professor Henry Nix of the Australian National University's Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies was intrigued by the frequency of thylacine sightings, and decided to investigate how closely they coincided with a computer generated map of where thylacines would most likely exist.  Nix developed a program called BIOCLIM, which accurately predicts where an animal, plant or particular ecosystem should occur.

    Nix drew upon scientific collections and official government records of where thylacines were shot and trapped by farmers and bounty hunters from the late 1800s until the early 1900s.  From this data, he generated a map showing optimal, sub optimal, and marginal areas of potential habitat.

    He then compared sighting records from 1936 onwards, and classified them into three groups based on their reliability - e.g., reliable, less reliable, and unreliable.  Discarding the unreliable sightings, he used the remaining sightings as independent data sets matching them against the BIOCLIM map.  The data sets matched the BIOCLIM predictions of where thylacines should occur almost perfectly, with the greatest frequency of sightings clustering within the areas of predicted optimum habitat.  Statistically, the chance that these independent data sets should so closely coincide is virtually zero.  Nix concluded: "These people really are seeing thylacines.", and advised that a thorough search for living thylacines be made before expending considerable resources in an attempt to clone the species.

    Adherents to the 1936 extinction hypothesis argue that if the thylacine were still extant, then a body would surely have been found or reported as road kill.  Also, prior to the appearance of Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD), the devil population was increasing, and this they state, indicates the removal of the top predator.  Both these points are valid considerations.

    They also contend that a small population of thylacines could not survive because of the problems encountered with inbreeding.  Thylacines and their cousins, Tasmanian devils, have a low level of genetic diversity in comparison to other Australian marsupials (Miller et al. 2009), consistent with a "founder effect".  In population genetics, the founder effect is the loss of genetic variation that occurs when a new population is established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population - this is true for many island species. 

    Inbreeding and the subsequent loss of genetic diversity would certainly expose any remnant thylacine population to an increased risk of extinction.  This can be seen in DFTD, where few devils show any natural resistance to the disease.  A DFTD Management Strategy Report produced by the Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment (February 2005) states:

    "Research has shown that due to the naturally low genetic diversity of Tasmanian devils, only a relatively low number of founder animals are required to represent the natural diversity of the species.  Population genetic research suggests that 25 individuals collected from a range of locations will be appropriate to establish and maintain a captive population long term".

    This is also likely to be true for the thylacine.

It is not the intended purpose of this section to provide detailed analysis and comment on each and every sighting, as there have been literally hundreds in the last 80+ years.  Neither is it the museum's intention to argue that all sightings are genuine, as that too is blatantly not the case.  Rather, we aim to provide evidence for the reader to at least question the blank acceptance of the 1936 extinction hypothesis.     Post-1936 sightings do not appear to be area specific - rather, they have been reported throughout the thylacine's entire historic range.  A number of the reported sightings were made by experienced bushmen who had previously hunted the thylacine, or by park rangers, both of which are highly unlikely to have made an error in identification.

. Distribution of all thylacine sightings 1936-1980.  Source: Smith 1980.

    Steven Smith (1981), in his report "The Tasmanian Tiger - 1980", proposed a scale to grade thylacine sightings.  The Smith scale is divided into 4 divisions: 

    1. Observer's reliability 
    2. Circumstances of report 
    3. Description of animal 
    4. Correlation with other sightings since 1934

    Each division is subdivided further with marks awarded in an ascending scale concurrent with the level of credibility.