Mike K.
One Too Many
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BEER?
HungaryTom said:This is a fabulous animal - sad that it is gone I will celebrate the day should it be re-discovered!!!!!!!
The photo above is of a Caspian tiger from the Caucasus in the Berlin Zoo that was published in 1899
The rediscovery happened via DNA sequencing - scientists namely found out this year that this subspecies is almost identical with the existent Siberian tiger the difference is only 1 nucleotide in the mitochondrial DNA. Actually it looks very similar to a Siberian tiger on the photo.
This was the most exciting news I read in terms of animals
http://www.petermaas.nl/extinct/speciesinfo/caspiantiger.htm
New genetic analysis revealed that the extinct Caspian tiger lives on in the Siberian Tiger (Panthera tigris altaica). Researchers from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom collected tissue from 20 Caspian tiger specimens kept in museums across Eurasia. Afterwards, researchers from the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) Laboratory of Genomic Diversity in Frederick, Maryland, sequenced parts of five mitochondrial genes. The Caspian Tiger's mitochondrial DNA is only one letter of genetic code separated from DNA of the Siberian Tiger, while it is readily distinguishable from the other tiger subspecies' DNA. This indicates that the Caspian en the Siberian subspecies are really one. The scientists have concluded that the two are so similar because both were descended from the same migrating ancestor. The ancestor colonized Central Asia via the narrow Gansu Corridor (Silk Road) from eastern China. The researchers suggest that through the early 1900s, Caspian and Siberian tiger populations intermingled, but hunters subsequently isolated the two groups. This resulted in the Siberian population splitting off from the Caspian population only in the past century. (Driscoll et al. 2009)
A quote from Driscoll et al. (2009): "Depending on further study of nuclear genes and morphology, and in view of previous equivocal or conflicting morphological assessments, Caspian and Amur tigers (Panthera tigris virgata, Illiger,1815 and Panthera tigris altaica, Temminck, 1844, respectively) might be considered as synonymous under the prior Panthera tigris virgata trinomial as prescribed by the rules of the ICZN (1999), in which case pronouncing the Caspian Tiger extinct may have been premature".
Articles -
http://bigcatnews.blogspot.com/2009/01/caspian-tiger-extinct-but-lives-on-in.html
http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/caspian-tigers.html#cr
Fletch said:I would like to change my vote from the badgerbadgerbadger to the South Asian Fishing Cat. (warning: chicken killer)
Dixon Cannon said:The Sonoran Chubacabra..
-dixon cannon