Scientists bringing the back the extinct Tasmanian tiger (thylacine)

The Tasmanian tiger (thylacine) was a beautiful carnivorous marsupial that went extinct in the 1930s in part due to human hunting and encroachment on the animal's natural habitats. (To this day though, people report occasional sightings in the region.) Now, researchers are planning to use genetic engineering to bring back the Tasmanian tiger. The project is a joint-effort between the University of Melbourne and Colossal Biosciences, the team trying to bring back the woolly mammoth. From CNN:

First, the team will construct a detailed genome of the extinct animal and compare it with that of its closest living relative — a mouse-size carnivorous marsupial called the fat-tailed dunnart — to identify the differences.

"We then take living cells from our dunnart and edit their DNA every place where it differs from the thylacine. We are essentially engineering our dunnart cell to become a Tasmanian tiger cell," [University of Melbourne professor Andrew] Pask explained.

Once the team has successfully programmed a cell, Pask said stem cell and reproductive techniques involving dunnarts as surrogates would "turn that cell back into a living animal."

Previously: "Newly discovered c.1933 footage of the extinct Tasmanian Tiger (thylacine)"