The Last Thylacine: The 1936 Footage That Ended a Species

On the night of September 6, 1936, the last known Thylacine froze to death on the concrete floor of an enclosure at Hobart Zoo in Tasmania. Her species had been protected by Australian law for fifty-nine days. For the next eighty-nine years, the world would call her Benjamin and identify her as a male. In 2022, peer-reviewed research confirmed the truth: she was female. The name Benjamin was a 1968 fabrication. We do not actually know what, if anything, she was called. This is the story of the Thylacine — the marsupial wolf of Tasmania, the four-million-year evolutionary experiment, the species that convergence-evolved with the wolf across one hundred and sixty million years of separate history. And the last individual of her kind, whose name we will never know. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⌬ CHAPTERS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 00:00 The Footage From 1936 01:05 Meet the Marsupial Wolf 04:25 A World Forty Thousand Years Old 07:00 Convergent Evolution: Not a Wolf 10:30 The Bounty 14:30 September 6, 1936 17:30 Her Name Was Not Benjamin 20:35 What Comes Next ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⌬ ABOUT THIS EPISODE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Episode 2 of LOST TO TIME — a series on extinct creatures, forgotten worlds, and the species the Earth no longer holds. Sources include peer-reviewed research from Newton et al. (2021, Communications Biology) on Thylacine bite mechanics, Attard et al. (2011, UNSW) on jaw biomechanics, and the October 2024 / May 2025 announcements from Colossal Biosciences regarding genome reconstruction and stem cell development. The 1933 archival footage referenced throughout this episode is held in public archives of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⌬ THE SERIES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ LOST TO TIME explores the species that vanished, the cities that were buried, and the mysteries the Earth still keeps. New episodes monthly. Subscribe for more:    / @echoesofearth-c2r   Watch Episode 1 — The Buzz-Saw Shark That Shouldn't Exist:    • The Buzz-Saw Shark That Hid From Science F...   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⌬ CREDITS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Written, edited, and produced by Echoes of Earth. Archival footage references: National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (public domain). This documentary was assembled using cinematic AI illustration tools to reconstruct historical scenes. All historical claims are grounded in cited peer-reviewed research. #Thylacine #ExtinctSpecies #LostToTime