The thylacine also known as the tasmanian tiger (meaning "dog-headed pouched one") was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times. The mature thylacine ranged from 39 to 51 in long, plus a tail of around 20 to 26 in. Adults stood about 24 in tall at the shoulder and weighed 40 to 70 lb. The Tasmanian Tiger earned its name because of the distinctive stripes along its lower back and tail, which were actually more reminiscent of a hyena than a big cat. In fact, though, this "tiger" was a marsupial, complete with a characteristic pouch, and was more closely related to wombats, koala bears and kangaroos. About 2,000 years ago, Australia's Thylacine population dwindled rapidly. The last holdouts of the breed persisted on the island of Tasmania, off the Australian coast--until the late 19th century, when the Tasmanian government put a bounty on thylacines because of their predilection for eating sheep. The last Tasmanian Tiger died in captivity in 1936, but it may yet be possible to de-extinct the breed. In most marsupial species, only the females possess pouches, which they use to incubate and protect their prematurely born young. Oddly enough, Tasmanian Tiger males also had pouches. Although Tasmanian Tigers looked like dogs, they didn't walk or run like modern canines. When startled, Thylacines briefly hopped on their two hind legs, and eyewitnesses attest that they moved stiffly and clumsily at high speeds. Presumably, this lack of coordination didn't help when Thylacines were mercilessly hunted by Tasmanian farmers or chased by their imported dogs! By the time the first humans encountered the Tasmanian Tiger, the Thylacine population was already dwindling. Hence, why we don't know whether the Tasmanian Tiger hunted at night as a matter of course, or if it was forced to rapidly adopt a nocturnal lifestyle because of human encroachment. In any case, it would have been much harder to find, much less shoot, a sheep-eating Thylacine in the middle of the night! However, a recent study has demonstrated that the Thylacine had comparatively weak jaws, and would have been incapable of tackling anything bigger than a small wallaby or baby ostrich. Given how recently the last Tasmanian Tiger died, it's reasonable to assume that scattered adults roamed Australia and Tasmania into the mid-to-late 20th century--but any sightings since then are doubtless the result of wishful thinking. The American media tycoon Ted Turner offered a $100,000 bounty for a living Thylacine in 1983, and in 2005, an Australian news magazine upped the prize to $1.25 million.