The largest living carnivorous marsupial: squat, thick-set, black-furred with white patches and a powerful bite. Extinct on the mainland roughly 3,500 years ago, it now survives only in Tasmania, scavenging carrion. A transmissible facial tumour disease has cut wild numbers by about 80 percent.
Taxonomy
- Order / family / genus
- Dasyuromorphia · Dasyuridae · Sarcophilus
Conservation
Endangered
· ENFacing a very high risk of extinction in the wild.
