Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today The news caused a buzz of excitement within the science community and created a flurry of questions about how the technology worked.<\/p>\n Closer to home, scientists in Melbourne, led by Professor Andrew Pask, are on a journey towards a similar scientific breakthrough \u2014 this time resurrecting the infamous Tasmanian tiger.<\/p>\n With Colossal\u2019s backing, Pask is confident we could see the animal roam the island again in the not-too-distant future.<\/p>\n What happened to the Tasmanian tiger?<\/p>\n Pask has always been enthralled by the Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine, and has spearheaded efforts to bring back the animal for the past 25 years.<\/p>\n He currently leads a team of 40 at the University of Melbourne\u2019s TIGRR (Thylacine Integrated Genomic Restoration Research) Lab which in 2022 partnered with Colossal to accelerate the process.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have a huge set-up, you know, they have hundreds of millions of US dollars to actually build these massive genetic engineering facilities and things that we don\u2019t have here in Australia,\u201d Pask told 7NEWS.com.au.<\/p>\n \u201cSo being able to partner with them on this project has actually been a massive game changer, and it\u2019s really accelerated the time that we can get this stuff done.\u201d<\/p>\n The last Tasmanian tiger died on September 7, 1936 at Hobart Zoo.<\/p>\n The species was completely driven to extinction by humans, with European settlers mistakenly blaming the deaths of their sheep on the animals.<\/p>\n \u201cIt probably wasn\u2019t killing sheep, very rarely. It wasn\u2019t its major food source,\u201d Pask said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut because it looked like the European grey wolf, it looked like predators that had been problematic for farming practices where they came from.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thylacine was, unfortunately, the scapegoat.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite many hopeful Tasmanians claiming to have seen the animal over the last seven decades, and Pask\u2019s lab regularly sent ziplock bags filled with faeces that people claimed were from the Tasmanian tiger, it was never seen again.<\/p>\n But Pask is confident he and his team can change that \u2014 and this is how.<\/p>\n How is this actually possible?<\/p>\n When we think of bringing back animals that have been wiped from the face of the earth, for most of us, our mind goes straight to Jurassic Park.<\/p>\n In the book, and film, scientists used DNA extracted from prehistoric insects preserved in amber to clone the dinosaurs.<\/p>\n Gaps in the DNA sequence were filled with reptilian, bird, or frog DNA.<\/p>\n What Pask and his team are doing to bring back the Tasmanian tiger is a little different, thankfully, as we all know what happened in Jurassic Park.<\/p>\n In 2018, Pask and his team published the first genome sequence of the Tasmanian tiger. A genome is the entire set of DNA instructions found in a cell.<\/p>\n This DNA was taken from a 108-year-old specimen preserved in alcohol at the Melbourne Museum.<\/p>\n \u201cYou cannot create life where there is none. You have to start with a living cell, and you need to edit that living cell to become your extinct animal,\u201d Pask said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can sequence the entire DNA of a thylacine, and we\u2019ve done that end to end, every single bit of its three billion bases we know every single part.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce you\u2019ve got that, you can say, what is the closest living relative?\u201d<\/p>\n In comes the fat-tailed dunnart, a very small, very cute, mouselike marsupial.<\/p>\n The animal is the Tasmanian tiger\u2019s closest living relative, with the two being over 99 per cent the same.<\/p>\n Unlike Jurassic Park, where scientists filled in the gaps of the frog or bird DNA to create a dinosaur, Pask and his team will go in and make edits in the fat-tailed dunnart\u2019s DNA.<\/p>\n \u201cWe actually just make every single edit so that that final genome is a thylacine genome,\u201d Pask said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe DNA from the last (Tasmanian tiger) that died, it\u2019s broken up into hundreds of tiny little pieces.<\/p>\n \u201cThough we know exactly what that code was, it\u2019s in little bits now, rather than being in whole chromosomes, and so you have to put it back together.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t do that, but we can use an animal that has its chromosomes altogether.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s easier to fix that 1 per cent than it is to try and rebuild the whole genome.\u201d<\/p>\n While it\u2019s not possible to rebuild a complete set of DNA from an extinct animal\u2019s DNA, it might be possible one day in the future.<\/p>\n When Colossal announced it had brought back the dire wolf, some critics said the animal was mostly still a grey wolf.<\/a><\/p>\n This will not be the same as the animal that Pask and his team are trying to bring back.<\/p>\n \u201cI think they made 20 edits across the whole (grey wolf\u2019s genome), but if you were to completely rebuild it, like we do, into the thylacine again, it would be thousands and thousands of edits,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the animal we want to put back into Tasmania, it\u2019s got to be complete. So, it\u2019d be 100 per cent (a Tasmanian tiger).\u201d<\/p>\n Pask and his team are up to the editing stage, which he says could take another 10 years.<\/p>\n In the future, when they\u2019ve got to the stage of creating a Tasmanian tiger embryo, it will be implanted into a surrogate.<\/p>\n This surrogate will be a fat-tailed dunnart, and gestation take up to 42 days.<\/p>\n Michelle Dracoulis, mayor of Derwent Valley Council in southern-central Tasmania and chair of the TIGRR Lab, travelled to Melbourne this week for Colossal Biosciences\u2019 first annual Tasmanian Thylacine Advisory Committee summit.<\/p>\n She said Tasmanians are ready and waiting for the return of their beloved animal.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thylacine is a huge thing in Tasmania. Culturally, it\u2019s part of the identity of the people down there,\u201d she told 7NEWS.com.au.<\/p>\n \u201cI think people would just be absolutely over the moon (if it was) out there again, because they dream of it. People think they hear it. People think they see footprints on the beach. It\u2019s never gone away.\u201d<\/p>\n Dracoulis said the tiger\u2019s return would be vital from both a tourism and environmental perspective in Tasmania.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re right at the edge of the world. It\u2019s nearly pristine parts, and the fact we\u2019ve taken this apex predator out, protecting that moving forward, especially when the world is changing so much, is vitally important,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Pask said what drives his work is the moral obligation he feels towards bringing back an animal that humans were responsible for destroying.<\/p>\n If the technology is available, and it is, then humans have to try.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s morally unjust (to) not put everything into trying to bring this species back,\u201d Pask said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of going, we owe it (not just) to this species, but to the ecosystem, to bring these animals back.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel very passionate about that.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tiny crabs could help save Australian reefs<\/p>\n 2 min read<\/p>\n![\"Download](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/right-red-arrow.92bca5db.svg.svg+xml\"){kind=icon}
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Tasmanian](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/d82a43f6b10735af1bf2c0812b2185f61a0955f2.jpg\")
Tasmanian Tigers in Hobart Zoo in 1933. Credit: Getty<\/p>\n![\"Jurasic](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/67eeb2d8a78f7b1e21d82a7ab5f7ae94e55a0a82.jpg\")
Jurasic Park (1993). Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/26a3e8ba2cf7a0a09db278baa1890e3f8400456a.jpg\")
The fat-tailed dunnart. Credit: Museums Victoria<\/p>\n![\"Professor](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/929e6c7ac07f8e1c703b914d10aaf03f36d0d5c7.jpg\")
Professor Andrew Pask and his team are up to the editing stage, which he says could take another 10 years. Credit: TIGRR Lab<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/dd2f980aa721365db2f4f06bf45f27ca447a8cc8.jpg\")
A preserved Tasmanian tiger head (left) and juvenile specimen (right). Credit: Michelle Dracoulis<\/p>\n![\"Andrew](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/6c68a48d812eacbbce9589e47b7877ad605bb2ce.jpg\")
Andrew Pask and Colossal Sciences director of species restoration Sarah Ord at the first annual Tasmanian Thylacine Advisory Committee summit in Melbourne. Credit: Michelle Dracoulis<\/p>\n