• The body of the last known living Tasmanian tiger was thought to be lost forever, but researchers have rediscovered the animal’s preserved pelt and skeleton in a museum cupboard in Tasmania.

• Parts of the specimen’s skin still show flattened fur where children were allowed to pat it. No one realized what they were handling at the time, and in the 1980s, the body was stored away and promptly forgotten about.

  It’s a rather sad conclusion to a tragic life. Having been illegally captured by a trapper named Elias Churchill in May of 1936, the older female thylacine was secretly sold to the now-closed Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, where she would die of exposure just a few months later, on the night of September 7.

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