Let me tell you a story. It is not that long ago, but we must place ourselves in a separate time, and a different logic. This is the thylacine, better known as the tasmanian tiger. It was the last great marsupial predator, survived by the cat sized quolls and tasmanian devils. But when I say "last" and "survived", I mean not prehistory, after all, where would this photo come from? No, it lived and hunted in tasmania until not so long ago. Early in the islands settlement, the new coming pioneers saw the tremendous value that tasmania had in it's rolling terrain: herding and grazing. Sheep by the thousands came streaming off the boats, with disease and stow-away rats that reaked havic with the native wildlife. The wombats, the marsupial mice, have all been decimated. But a different fate lay ahead for our character beast. As tasmania became one giant sheep farm, the thylacine found it much easier to hunt stupid sheep that do not run away, than kangaroos that are so much harder to catch. And quickly, they became an agricultural nuisance. The ranchers and herders began killing them by hundreds. Soon the tasmanian government went as far as to put a bounty on tasmanian tiger skins and heads. The only good tiger, was a dead one. And they were killed by thousands. Many were brought to Zoos. But they never aclimatized well. Soon there were very few left. And some naturalists developed a concern. They did some research, and by the year 1936 a law was passed to protect the thylacine. That year, a female tasmanian tiger nicknamed Benjamin, died on September seventh at the Hobart Zoo. And with her last breath, the thylacine went extinct. You can watch video footage of Benjamin and other thylacines on certain websites.
I told you this story, to tell you another, that today, with the great technology of genetics and cloning, with the help of a preserved thylacine pup, it may be possible to ressurect this long lost species, and amend the hole in nature. It is a project spurned by curiousity, love, guilt, and most of all the ecological decay that is happening across our planet. Few people know the thousands of species that have gone extinct since the year 1500, the Dodo is famous, the toolache wallaby, the moas-birds up to 13 feet tall, the quagga, the audubon bighorn sheep, the passenger pigeon, the carolina parakeet, the bali tiger, the laysan rail, the blue buck, stephen's island wren, the lesser stick nest rat, and the O'o to name a few. But someday, we may use the fragments of existing DNA to bring the species we have butchered back to this earth. And it is by evolutionary theory, that the thylacine project has gotten as far as it has. Not by creation science. I doubt wondering how to spontaneously create life would help in finding suitable egg cell recipients of related species, such as the eastern spotted quoll, or the genetic markers that determine what makes a thylacine, or the ecological adaptations that proved which environments the thylacine would have lived in. But go ahead and believe what you want. Because evolution has saved your life, in every pill you swallow, and in the upcoming genetherapy that may cure your disorders. But evolution is the silent hero, scorned by those it helps, and loved by those it makes into social martyrs in this wonderful advanced country. My name is Ben. And I am studying to be an evolutionary biologist, and someday, maybe you'll see the facts as I do.