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# The Tasmanian Tiger Hunted Like a Crocodile, Not a Wolf
- URL: https://www.gottabekidding.me/the-tasmanian-tiger-hunted-like-a-crocodile-not-a-wolf/
- Published: 2026-09-22T10:03:23.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-22T10:03:23.000Z
- Description: Its skull didn't match any living predator on Earth. What does that mean for the story we told ourselves, and acted on, before we checked?
- Author: Out of Bounds
- Tags: History

The thylacine had an oversized skull, a long and tall upper jaw, and a mace-like widened snout. Scientists had long assumed it hunted like a wolf, a big, dangerous sheep-killing predator. That assumption got it wiped off the planet.

New skull analysis from Flinders University says we had it wrong. Those jaws were probably unsuited to holding down large animals like sheep. Instead, that long, deep jaw was built to subdue small prey with powerful snapping bites, think bandicoots, not livestock, using a technique similar to how crocodiles catch small, agile fish.

Published in *Nature Communications*, the research found that thylacine skulls sported a unique combination of features that matched no known adaptations in any living carnivorous mammal. The average thylacine weighed half as much as the average wolf, yet its skull was roughly the same size. A compact body carrying a crocodile's snapping geometry. Nothing alive looks like that today because nothing alive is that.

The name Tasmanian "tiger" captured the misconception European settlers carried: an apex predator threatening livestock, particularly sheep. The study's lead researcher says the findings push back against the myths that drove the thylacine to extinction, a careful, academic way of saying we killed the last one in 1936 based on a story we invented.

We misread the jaw, wrote the accusation and carried out the sentence. The skull, it turns out, was telling a different story the whole time.

**Read the full story at** [Flinders University News, September 1, 2026](https://news.flinders.edu.au/blog/2026/09/01/jaw-dropping-news-on-the-tassie-tiger/?ref=gottabekidding.me)

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**Hot Take:** The thylacine sounds like something we dug out of a cave. We hunted it out of existence within living memory, when exterminating an entire species could still pass for wildlife management.