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Martha Sear was close to tears as she described how precious a newly acquired thylacine pelt was - a symbol of extinction, beautifully kept with intact paws, whiskers, nose and a thick winter coat. The National Museum of Australia curator has seen the rare skin finally returned home after being missing for almost 100 years, spending part of its life unnoticed under a power cord in a New Zealand canoe hire shop. "It's a deeply moving object. To be alone with it, to look at it, it touches you," Dr Sear said. The museum recently bought the preserved pelt of the Tasmanian tiger, extinct since February 7, 1936, for $250,000. "When you think about what that loss has meant ... the apex predator has gone and that has changed Tasmania forever," Dr Sear said. The pelt has been missing for nearly 100 years: taken from Tasmania by a New Zealand taxidermist Archibald Robertson in 1923, it was inherited by his daughter, Janet Withers, in 1970. She loaned it to a North Island canoe hire shop owned by local taxidermist John McCosh, where it was stored under a power cord in 1999, and eventually rediscovered by a local museum curator, who posted an image of it on social media in 2017. Now, scientists in Melbourne are using the DNA extracted from the pelt to further study the animal while conservators work quickly to have it on display in Canberra. The skin, one of the best preserved in the world, may give scientists the chance to bring the animal back to life, while museum staff hope the pelt serves as a precious symbol of modern extinction. Tasmanian conservator David Thurrowgood recalls getting a call from an English thylacine research group who saw the post on Twitter. “They became quite concerned it could end up going astray,” Mr Thurrowgood said. He said strangers had started offering Mr McCosh $1000 for the skin - peanuts compared to the $250,000 it sold to the National Museum for in December last year. Already noticing the huge amount of attention the skin was getting at the time, Mr McCosh contacted Ms Withers, who contacted Mr Thurrowgood. He was concerned Ms Withers would be swindled out of the skin’s true value, while also wanting to ensure the object was preserved for scientific research. “She couldn’t look after it, so it went on to an independent valuation so it could be sold,” Mr Thurrowgood said. Mr Thurrowgood took it home with him to Tasmania in 2018, storing it in a special case with his carry-on luggage. “I was slightly nervous, but I have travelled with $300-million paintings by Rembrandt,” he said. “I was a little bit excited and emotional to have the thing coming back to Australia.” Only a few people knew it existed, including his young daughters, who took great pride in announcing that their father “has a Tasmanian tiger at home”. “It was really a sad object. I hadn't been quite prepared for the sense of what a beautiful animal it might have been,” Mr Thurrowgood said. The thylacine was extinct on the Australian mainland long before Europeans arrived in Tasmania, where they hunted the tiger to extinction; the last one died in a Hobart zoo in 1936. Ms Withers said her father would have hated all the fuss around the skin. “It’s been a huge adventure for me,” she said. While she did have hopes the pelt could be used to create a new tiger, she was glad it could be returned to Australia. “But I do wish that we could send to you, with very much gratitude, all the possums that we’ve got in New Zealand,” she said. Ms Withers has divided the $250,000 up between her and her four children, with no grand plans for how to spend it. But University of Melbourne biologist Andrew Pask does have have grand plans for the animal. “It was fantastic - we’re always looking for more specimens,” Professor Pask said. “The more specimens we have, the better we can recreate the picture. This adds a whole extra chunk of data that we can now access.” Professor Pask and his colleagues will look to map out the genome of the creature, which could one day go towards creating a live clone, but this could cost billions. “People already have the materials that we need to make the thylacine. It’s a very expensive endeavour, so right now it would be much better spending the money on the preserving the marsupials we have now.” That sense of loss is echoed by other museum staff; National Museum conservator Prue Castles said they all wanted the best for the animal. The museum already houses a collection of thylacine remains, including a preserved adult - one of only five known to exist and the pelt is one of only 78 to exist worldwide. Curators said the thylacine was a female and because of its thick coat, guessed it most likely died at the start of the Tasmanian winter but are unsure how. “There’s a great kind of sadness when you look at it, when you understand the history of those animals and how they’ve become extinct,” Ms Castles said.

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