An amateur naturalist has bought what he hoped were authentic Tasmanian Tiger hairs in a UK auction, and it turns out they were!

Colin Veitch, microscopist from CSIRO, told Ross and John he first found out about the hairs by reading a newspaper article.

“I saw an article about a man who purchased these hairs from an auction in the UK and he was crowdfunding to buy a small microscope, and I thought well we’ve got microscopes than can do much more than a little $1000 one can, so I offered our services to help him have a look at the fibres,” Colin said.

“To help him find out if they were genuine?” Ross asked.

“And it turns out they were!” He replied.

“Those fibres would have been taken some time in the 1800s and some naturalist had taken them back to the UK.

“They were just in a small envelope, with their Latin name handwritten on the front.”

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To find out more about this amazing CSIRO project, click HERE.