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Overview
My colleague Debbie Hynes of thylacoleo.com recently drew my attention to a photograph of a thylacine footprint cast she has published on her website.
Writes Debbie, "here is the plaster cast of a track left by a Thylacine, evidently alive and well in Western Australia."
In her discussion forum she adds "it's a plaster cast taken in Western Australia a 'year or two ago'. The people who found the tracks and took the cast don't want to go public and we have to respect their wishes."
Giving her own opinion, she states "if it's not a track left by a Thylacine then I don't know what else it could be."
General impressions
My first general impression is that yes, this does resemble the imprint that would be expected from the rear foot of a Tasmanian tiger: There are four visible toes, claws are clearly present and the carpal pad is extended.
At a glance, this is a cast of a thylacine footprint.
Hoax image?
Before we analyse the print in detail, the next question that comes to mind is whether this could be a hoax. A hoax could conceivably be carried out by creating a hoax print and then casting it. A hoax print could be created if the hoaxer has access to a genuine thylacine paw (and this technique has been employed for genuine reasons, for example, in order to create the print used in Barbara Trigg's book "Tracks, Scats and Other Traces") - or if the hoaxer has ample time to craft a print themselves.
The first thing to notice about the WA cast is that this is not a photograph of the cast. Rather, it appears to be a scan; that is, the cast and ruler seem to have been placed directly on a scanner. This can be seen by the presence of sand which presumably has come loose from the cast and is now resting on the scanner surface (see arrow at 'E' in diagram below).
Further, the most ventral portions of the cast are in sharp focus; these are the parts that one would expect to make contact with a scanner if the cast had been placed on one. The claws provide an adequate example.
Finally, Debbie has been led to believe this is a genuine cast.
Taken together I have no obvious reason to doubt that this is a direct scan of a genuine cast. The next question is whether the cast was taken "in the field" and if so, whether the cause of the original print was in fact a West Australian thylacine.
Analysis of the cast
The entire cast presents itself as substrate - i.e. sand or gravel. At no point is there clearly plaster protruding through the gravel and sand which has adhered to the cast. This may be of note but I do not have any experience with creating casts in order to form my own opinion.
Paul Clacher's Big Cat website contains a page showing numerous plaster casts of animal footprints. Perhaps the first thing to be said is that the appearance of casts can vary widely. However, none of these casts shows substrate attached in the same manner as seen in this West Australian print.
(If you would like to contribute to this aspect of the discussion, you can leave a comment below or contact me directly.)
Sharon West's Mystery Animal Research Centre of Australia (MARCA) website also contains a page showing footprint casts (click on "Field Guide"). Once again none of the casts display the same level of substrate adhesion. All have a whitish appearance presumably due to the plaster and which is not obvious on the West Australian cast.
My own photographs of other casts of animal prints also clearly show the plaster, even when substrate has adhered to the cast.
Although probably not cause for dismissing this image outright, it stands to reason that this cast needs to be examined first-hand (and by an expert) before it can be considered genuine.
Analysis of the print
The total length of the print can be clearly read from the yellow lines labelled 'A' as being about 16.5cm.
Cameron Campbell in the online thylacine museum cites "the earliest account of the thylacine" (Lieutenant Governer Paterson, 1805) in stating the length of the hindfoot of the thylacine is 6 inches (and the forefoot 5 inches). By Paterson's account, the hindfoot is 15.2cm - reasonably similar to the West Australian cast.
The lines labelled 'B', 'C' and 'D' were intended to measure other dimensions of the cast. However, between all of the above-linked websites and Heinz Moeller's book "Der Beutelwolf" I cannot find more detailed descriptions of the dimensions of thylacine feet. Therefore there is little use in undertaking an analysis to precisely measure these dimensions.
Finally, by inspection, the general proportions and features of the cast are a reasonable match with Heinz Moeller's 1997 illustrations (citing Mooney 1988).
More questions than answers
As mentioned earlier, this cast will not be accepted as evidence for the continued existence of the thylacine without it first being examined by an expert.
If the person who made the cast was to provide further information, then the following questions would be most pertinent:
- When was the print cast?
- Where was the print cast?
- What was the context of the print (i.e. on what substrate? how moist was the substrate?)
- Were other prints observed?
- If so, was a record made of the gait (the layout of the prints, correlated to the feet which made them - i.e. left/right; fore/hind)?
- Were other casts made?
- Were photographs, video or audio recorded?
- How many people observed the print prior to casting?
- Was the print immediately cast upon discovery, or did time elapse with the observer(s) leaving the location before returning to create the cast?
- What motivated the observer(s) to make the cast?
- What drew the attention of the observer(s) to the cast in the first place?
- What technique was used in creating the cast?
Conclusion
Without further opportunity for an expert to examine the cast, it will undoubtedly not be accepted by the research community as evidence of the mainland presence of thylacines.
Although its authenticity cannot be proved from a single image of the cast, the size and shape of the print warrants follow-up investigation.
Interestingly Greg Heberle, formerly of the Department of Conservation and Land Management in Western Australia, published an article in Conservation Science Western Australia in 2004 titled "Reports of alleged thylacine sightings in Western Australia". The report is based on 203 alleged sightings reported to either MARCA and/or the Department itself.
Western Australia is also the location of Kevin Cameron's imfamous photos of an animal that resembles a thylacine, taken in 1985.
The "Thylacine Hole" mummy specimen was discovered in a cave near Mundrabilla Station in Western Australia in 1966. Its condition was so fine that the initial reaction was that it could not be more than a few years old. Carbon dating put the carcass at several thousand years but one contrary theory is that the dating method was marred by groundwater which had soaked through the specimen.
If genuine, this present cast would almost certainly demand conservation research be immediately directed towards Tasmanian tigers in Western Australia.
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