Name: The Tasmanian tiger-wolf

Description: This remarkable animal looked like wolf with tiger stripes on its back and tail with a pouch for its young.

Reason for being extinct: The Tasmanian tiger-wolf became extinct on the mainland of Australia long ago because it could not compete for food with an introduced species, the dingo, a kind of wild dog. Tiger-wolves continued to thrive on the dingo-free island of Tasmania off Australia's south coast until Europeans arrived in the region. At that time, settlers began clearing the tiger-wolf's habitat for sheep farming. Habitat destruction reduced the natural prey available to tiger-wolves. With its natural prey base reduced, the tiger-wolf began to kill domestic sheep for food, much to the dismay of the local farmers. The farmers mounted a campaign to destroy the carnivores who were preying on their livestock. In the mid-1800's, landowners paid a bounty for killing tiger-wolves, and the government introduced an even larger bounty in 1888. The programs were quite successful and the tiger-wolf was poisoned, shot, snared, hunted with dogs, trapped, and otherwise exterminated through the early 1900s. An unknown disease decimated the remaining population in 1910. By 1933 it was believed that the species had become extinct in the wild. In 1936, the last known Tasmanian tiger-wolf died in captivity.

Fossils??: None.