New Research

Rock Art Suggests the Tasmanian Tiger May Have Survived on Mainland Australia Longer Than Previously Thought

Archaeologists think some of the paintings may be less than 1,000 years old, even though the animals were thought to have disappeared from the continent roughly 3,000 years ago

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

April 3, 2026

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Newly discovered rock art is raising questions about when the Tasmanian tiger went extinct on the Australian mainland.

The Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine, is thought to have disappeared from the Australian mainland roughly 3,000 years ago. The animals continued to survive on the Australian island of Tasmania until 1936, when the last documented individual died in captivity in a Hobart zoo. It’s possible the striped, doglike marsupial predators persisted in the wild for decades after that, as hikers, tourists, trappers and biologists have reported more than 1,000 potential sightings over the past century.

Now, archaeologists have discovered Indigenous rock art that may challenge the first part of this timeline, they report in a new paper published in the journal Archaeology in Oceania.

Working with local Indigenous groups, researchers have documented 14 paintings of thylacines in Arnhem Land, a vast, wild region in Australia’s Northern Territory. Some of the artwork appears to be less than 1,000 years old, which suggests thylacines may have persisted on the Australian mainland for longer than previously thought.

The smallest of the artworks are five inches long, while the largest are eight feet. In all of them, the thylacines are depicted as elongated doglike animals with long tapering tails, rounded ears and prominent snouts. Some of the creatures have stripes, but others don’t, suggesting that “body shape was enough to show it was a thylacine,” they write.

Additionally, the thylacines’ tails are shown in a few different positions, and some of the animals are depicted with sharp teeth. “These variations don’t seem to be linked to the style or age of the work,” the study co-authors write in the Conversation. “It’s more likely they relate to different ways paintings were used to pass on information about the animal.”

The paintings were created with red and yellow ochre, as well as a type of white pigment known as kaolin. This white pigment “doesn’t last very long,” suggesting that the images may be “younger than we would expect,” lead author Paul Taçon, an archaeologist at Griffith University, tells ABC Hobart’s Ryk Goddard.

This might mean that thylacines survived in Arnhem Land for much longer than previously estimated; perhaps the artists wanted to recreate living creatures they saw with their own eyes. But another possibility is that the artists were inspired by earlier paintings of thylacines, says Taçon in a statement.

Either way, the depictions show that the thylacine “held a meaningful place in everyday life and local knowledge long before it went extinct,” says co-author Andrea Jalandoni, an archaeologist at Griffith University, in the statement. Some of the Indigenous elders the researchers collaborated with told stories about the Ngalyod, a sacred figure for Indigenous groups, keeping thylacines as pets.

“Thylacine rock art offers rare insight into how people related to this animal in the past,” Jalandoni adds.

The researchers also documented two rock-art images of the Tasmanian devil, which also once roamed mainland Australia but now lives only on Tasmania.

Until now, scientists had recorded roughly 150 rock-art depictions of Tasmanian tigers on the Australian mainland and 23 images of Tasmanian devils. The difference suggests thylacines were once “more widespread and more culturally important” across mainland Australia than Tasmanian devils, the researchers write.

Some modern Indigenous artists carry on the traditions of their ancestors by painting thylacines on bark, canvas and paper. A children’s book about two thylacines was also published in the Kunwinjku language in 2018.

“The thylacine lives on in western Arnhem Land not as a ghost from the past but as a meaningful creature that still has present day relevance,” the researchers write.

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.