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". Positive identification of the thylacine as the animal encountered cannot be made from this report, since the tiger quoll ("Dasyurus maculatus") is similarly described.