Further Reading
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Our initial paper describes this work in more detail.
"The mitochondrial genome sequence of the Tasmanian tiger
(Thylacinus cynocephalus)", Genome Research,
vol. 19 (February 2009).
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The online supplement for the above paper provides
additional depth and peripheral material.
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The possible causes for the extinction of thylacines in
all parts of Australia except Tasmania, which most experts believe
to have been complete by about 3000 years ago, are discussed in the
paper by C. N. Johnson and S. Wroe,
"Causes of extinction of vertebrates during the
Holocene of mainland Australia: arrival of the dingo, or human impact?",
The Holocene, vol. 13 (2003), pp. 941-948.
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The last 100 years of the species' existence is described in great detail
in the excellent
book by Robert Paddle,
The Last Tasmanian Tiger: The History and Extinction of the Thylacine,
Cambridge University Press, 2000.
One of the controversial claims made in the book (pages 22-24) is
that thylacines may have survived in mainland Australia into the early 1800s.
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Additional details about the history of the thylacine mother and cubs at
the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., together with a discussion of the role
of zoos in the conservation of endangered species, can be found in a
paper by Chris Wemmer,
"Opportunities lost: zoos and the marsupial that tried to
be a wolf",
Zoo Biology, vol. 21 (2002), pp. 1-4.
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Evolutionary relationships among placental mammals and marsupials are discussed in the
paper by William J. Murphy, Pavel Pevzner, and Stephen J. O'Brien,
"Mammalian phylogenomics comes of age", Trends in Genetics, vol. 20 (2004), pp. 631-639.
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The importance of sequencing marsupial genomes is discussed
in the paper by Paul Samollow,
"The opossum genome: insights and opportunities from an alternative
mammal", Genome Research, vol. 18 (2008), pp. 1199-1215.