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Despite Isolation, Tasmanian Tiger Pups Were More Like Wolves Than Other Marsupials 12 JANUARY 2021 The thylacine has long been considered a truly remarkable species. The extinct Australian beast was a marsupial, but its skull was distinctly canine in appearance, almost identical to the skulls of red foxes and grey wolves.
Now, new research has confirmed that this resemblance wasn t limited to adult thylacines ( Thylacinus cynocephalus) - it was present even in the skulls of newborn pups, and persisted throughout the animal s lifespan. The finding could shed more light on how different animals can evolve similar characteristics to occupy similar ecological niches, even though they might be unrelated and separated by space and time - a phenomenon known as convergent evolution. ....
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. ....