A well-preserved thylacine head was a gruesome sight – but it also contained RNA molecules crucial to reconstructing the extinct animal’s genome Breakthroughs sometimes turn up in unexpected places. The researchers working on the international push to bring back the thylacine say they found theirs in a long-ignored bucket in the back of a cupboard at a Melbourne museum. It contained an astonishingly well-preserved head of the extinct marsupial, also known as the Tasmanian tiger. Continue reading...

‘It’s like time-travelling,’ says Dr Rebecca West – ‘we’re reversing and going back to what it would have been like 200 years ago’ Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Quolls and bettongs delivered to the far north-west corner of New South Wales are the final piece of a decade-long project to reintroduce seven locally extinct mammals to the arid desert landscape. Twenty burrowing bettongs and 20 western quolls have been released into Sturt national park as part of the Wild Deserts project. They joined previously released and flourishing populations of bilbies, bandicoots and mulgaras (a small but ferocious native predator). Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading...