Facts about thylacines, the extinct marsupials that biology students confused for wolves

Thylacines went extinct in the 1900s, and were absolutely stunning animals. They converged so heavily on canines (which lived on entirely different continents!) that their skulls looked pretty much identical, with a few key differences such as marsupial skull pits under the thylacine's cranium (not pictured)! In fact, a college used a thylacine skull as a canine skull for exams for years, fooling many students to the point it had to be replaced with a wolf's skull. I wonder if the professors themselves were aware? 

A key difference was that the jaws of a thylacine had a much wider possible gape than any other land mammal alive today! 

Unfortunately, the last thylacine died due to neglect in the zoo it was being kept in. Animal welfare laws weren't the best, and it's frustrating how easily this could've been avoided. Thylacines seemed to have shaped the lives of the earliest people who lived in the areas it lived in, with cave art from prehistoric man that lives alongside it depicting their telltale stripes. There are actually many cave paintings that depict thylacines!

Unfortunately, they went extinct in the Australian mainland and New Guinea not long after human settlement, but they remained on Tasmania alongside the native peoples of the land. British settlers post-colonization would often set up farms near thylacine habitats, and hunted them to extinction since they preyed on livestock. All in all, extremely tragic. Imperialism absolutely sucks. They will always be remembered in the hearts of paleontologists and animal lovers in general <3 I hope you learned something new or at least find these little guys as amazing as I do!