Bringing the Tasmanian Tiger back from extinction

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2023

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It sounds like a movie script, like Jurassic Park, but Australian scientists are actually aiming to 'de-extinct' an animal.

The Tasmanian Tiger, or Thylacine, became extinct in 1936, nearly 90 years ago.

It's native to Australia, and thanks to millions of dollars of funding via a US-based biotech company, Colossal Biosciences, research is underway which could bring it back to life.

Sam Clack finds out why the project has attracted funding from a host of celebrity backers and asks whether science fiction could become reality?

Produced and presented by Sam Clack.

(Image: Tasmanian Tigers. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	abnormal transactions.
0:03.0	Some kind of cyber attack on a bank.
0:05.1	Tens of millions of dollars.
0:06.9	Something I don't think anybody has seen before.
0:09.1	It's a cyber criminal group.
0:10.7	From the BBC World Service.
0:12.5	The Lazarus Heist is back for season two.
0:14.7	It was really like in the movies.
0:16.2	Find out more at the end of this podcast.
0:22.0	Now you may well have seen or heard the news recently about the discovery of the remains
0:26.9	of an animal which has been extinct for generations.
0:30.5	We went through the collection really, really carefully.
0:34.0	Couldn't find it by going through the collection.
0:36.5	Had to start looking at some sometimes fairly obscure archival records.
0:40.8	The skeleton and skin of the thylacine were discovered in storage
0:44.9	in the museum's education office.
0:47.3	They'd been used in a travelling exhibit in the late 1990s.
0:51.7	The flattened hair on the skin attributed to children patting it. No one realising back
0:57.7	then its significance. So those remains of the Thylacine, perhaps better known as the Tasmanian
1:04.0	Tiger, had been gathering dust in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery for generations. But you
1:10.0	have to go back even further to find out
1:12.3	about the last Thylacine to walk the earth.
	...

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