Tasmanian tigers have been gone for almost a century but one genetic engineering and de-extinction company is on a mission to change that. Known more commonly as the Tasmanian tiger, the keystone species is not a tiger at all, but a carnivorous marsupial native to Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea also known as a thylacine.
Tasmanian and broader Australian ecosystems have suffered biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation since the species was driven to extinction by human hunting almost a century ago. Australia has one of the highest mammalian extinction rates in the world and losing an apex predator can trigger waves of environmental harm which can lead to the spread of disease, increasing wildfires and invasive species, and a disruption to natural biogeochemical cycles.