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DNA samples too degraded for museum to revive Tassie tiger

Pickled ... a thylacine embryo

The resurrection of the Tasmanian tiger will have to wait.

After five years trying to extract DNA from preserved thylacines in an effort to bring the lost marsupial back to life, the Australian Museum has abandoned the ambitious project, after finding its supply of Tasmanian tiger DNA too degraded.

The thylacine was hunted to extinction in the 1930s but the museum's previous director, Mike Archer, championed the use of cloning technology in 1999 as a means of recreating the animal, despite many scientists' scepticism. The project relied on three specimens, including a 139-year-old pup pickled in a bottle of pure alcohol, as a source of DNA.

The museum's director, Frank Howarth, said yesterday that the museum's skills were not sufficient to take the project beyond making a copy of each thylacine gene. Further work would require growing cells in a laboratory, which the museum could not do and it would have to relinquish the lead role in the project to another agency.

"In fact, further investigation has now revealed that the thylacine DNA is far too degraded to even construct an DNA library," Mr Howarth said in a statement. "Given this, the project cannot proceed to the next stage."

Many scientists had raised doubts about the project, with Australian cloning experts having said the thylacine was likely to have more than 30,000 genes. Only a small number had been reconstructed. Scientists also questioned whether a clone could be grown in a surrogate womb of a related animal such as the Tasmanian devil.

Professor Archer moved from the museum to become dean of science at the University of NSW in late 2003. In a statement last night he said he was "personally disappointed" that the Australian Museum could not proceed with the project. Despite the setback, he said he hoped the work would continue at another institution.

"Many of us still hope that it might be possible to bring back this magnificent animal to life," Professor Archer said.

"It was Australia's top marsupial predator and it was wiped out within living memory by people ignorant or careless of its unique place in the animal world.

"The technology to make it happen is improving all the time - both for recovering degraded DNA and for extracting DNA from many kinds of museum specimens. I believe science has a duty to continue to assemble the building blocks that will be needed to do it. It is for the museum to determine its own research priorities and it would be improper of me to comment on that."