Tasmanian Tigers and Wolves Evolved Uncannily Similar Skulls Image: The Pask Lab The extinct thylacine had the stripes of a tiger, the body of a canid, and the pouch of a kangaroo. These ill-fated, predatory marsupials are a classic example of convergent evolution, in which species independently evolve the same traits, and a new study breaks down just how remarkably similar Tasmanian tigers’ skulls were to those of wolves. Advertisement Along with the rest of Marsupialia, the thylacine—popularly known as the Tasmanian tiger—split off from the gray wolf (and the rest of placental mammals) about 160 million years ago. In the long evolutionary trajectory that followed, despite living in different environments, the two animals wound up with very similar developmental adaptations to their skulls, according to a paper published in the journal Communications Biology.