SYDNEY: Australian scientists have revived a project to try to bring an extinct animal, the fabled Tasmanian tiger, back to life, the team leader said on Wednesday.
Renewed determination to recover genes from the bones and teeth of the tiger in museums had impressed sceptics, the dean of science at the University of New South Wales, Professor Mike Archer said.
Archer launched a project to clone the animal using DNA recovered from a pickled tiger pup when he was director of the Australian Museum in Sydney in 1999. He left the museum in 2003 and the project was abandoned earlier this year, with researchers saying they could not find enough quality DNA from the tiger or thylacine.
The Tasmanian tiger, which looked like a large, long dog with stripes, was hunted close to extinction within a hundred years of the arrival of European settlers south of Australia.
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