'I know it's a thylacine': Men claim new video captures 'Tasmanian tiger'
A video possibly showing a Tasmanian tiger has been released in Hobart by a group claiming the long-thought extinct marsupial still lives.
The footage was taken by three Tasmanian men in November and purports to show a thylacine in a remote part of the state's bushland at dusk.
"I don't think it's a thylacine ... I know it's a thylacine," Greg Richardson, who has been hunting the tiger for more than 25 years, said on Wednesday.
Eight decades after they were presumed extinct, the footage released by the men is being claimed as the best possible evidence to come in years.
The group say the area where they believe they saw the Tassie tiger needs to remain secret and protected.
The Tasmanian wilderness where the footage was shot is about 50km from Maydena in central southern Tasmania, News Corp reports.
Not to be confused with the Tasmanian devil, the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, once occupied most of Australia with a small isolated population persisting on the island of Tasmania when it was colonised by the British in the 19th century.
While there are occasional claims of sightings of the animal, competition with dingoes drove the species to extinction on the mainland of Australia almost 2000 years ago.
However, despite the fact the animal is classified as extinct, the idea that a few might be clinging on in remote areas has continued to make headlines over the years.
Most recently it was reported that researchers in North Queensland were launching a new study on Tasmanian tigers following a series of reported sightings in Cape York.
The latest apparent video evidence comes on the anniversary of the death of the last known thylacine at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart on September 7, 1936.
The last definite footage of a Tasmanian tiger is of one named Benjamin who was trapped in the Florentine Valley, west of Hobart, in 1933.
The film shows Benjamin pacing around a zoo cage where he – and his species – spent his final three years of life.
The most recent odds of the Tasmanian tiger still existing are about one in 1.6 trillion, according to scientists.
