Scientists are trying to create a Jurassic Park on an extinct animal

The Australian thylacine, commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger, was declared extinct in 1986, 50 years after the last known living tiger died in captivity. But the animal means so much to locals that people still spend a lot of time and money looking for them in the wild. And while thousands of sightings have been reported, CBS News reports that there is no official confirmation that they are still around. While these dedicated enthusiasts remain committed to field camera monitoring and expeditions, scientists have another tactic in mind: pulling a Jurassic Park on thylacine by editing the DNA of its closest living relative so that a new one can be born.

• De-extinction: Labs looking to revive the thylacine include the University of Melbourne’s TIGRR lab, where developmental biologist Andrew Pask raised $15 million for a ‘de-extinction project’. This involves altering similar DNA to match the Tasmanian tiger’s genome.
• An unlikely family member: These apex predators weighed an average of 50 pounds and looked more like wolves than tigers, but they were actually members of the marsupial family (think koalas and kangaroos). This makes the fat-tailed dunnart, a mouse-like creature, a top candidate. “We have to start with a living cell and then bring our thylacine back to life,” Pask tells CBS. One skeptic, Kris Helgen of the Australian Museum Research Institute, doesn’t think the plan is scientifically possible.
• Breakthrough Science: Whether the project has a chance or not, the labs have had groundbreaking innovations to advance the field. Last year, researchers from Stockholm University sequenced the RNA of a specimen from the Tasmanian Tiger Museum, the first time this has been successfully done on an extinct animal, the Wildlife Society reports.
• What happened to the tiger? Europeans who settled in Australia brought with them the practice of sheep farming and eventually placed a bounty on Tasmanian tigers, which they blamed for livestock losses, according to the National Museum Australia. This practice, along with habitat disruption and new diseases, quickly decimated their population in the 1930s.

(The last known specimen of the tiger was mislabeled in a museum.)