section_path: Taxonomic and evolutionary history
section_name: Taxonomic and evolutionary history
paragraph_text: Taxonomic and evolutionary history
  
  Numerous examples of thylacine engravings and rock art have been found, dating back to at least 1000 BC. Petroglyph images of the thylacine can be found at the Dampier Rock Art Precinct, on the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia.
  
  By the time the first European explorers arrived, the animal was already extinct in mainland Australia and New Guinea and rare in Tasmania. Europeans may have encountered it in Tasmania as far back as 1642, when Abel Tasman first arrived in Tasmania. His shore party reported seeing the footprints of "wild beasts having claws like a Tyger ". Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, arriving with the Mascarin in 1772, reported seeing a "tiger cat".
  
  The first definitive encounter was by French explorers on 13 May 1792, as noted by the naturalist Jacques Labillardière, in his journal from the expedition led by d'Entrecasteaux. In 1805, William Paterson, the Lieutenant Governor of Tasmania, sent a detailed description for publication in the Sydney Gazette. He also sent a description of the thylacine in a letter to Joseph Banks, dated 30 March 1805.
  
  The first detailed scientific description was made by Tasmania's Deputy Surveyor-General, George Harris, in 1808, five years after first European settlement of the island. Harris originally placed the thylacine in the genus Didelphis, which had been created by Linnaeus for the American opossums, describing it as Didelphis cynocephala, the "dog-headed opossum". Recognition that the Australian marsupials were fundamentally different from the known mammal genera led to the establishment of the modern classification scheme, and in 1796, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire created the genus Dasyurus, where he placed the thylacine in 1810. To maintain gender agreement with the genus name, the species name was altered to cynocephalus. In 1824, it was separated out into its own genus, Thylacinus, by Temminck. The common name derives directly from the genus name, originally from the Greek θύλακος (thýlakos), meaning "pouch" or "sack" and ine meaning "pertaining to". The name is pronounced THY -lə-seen or THY -lə-syne.