Thylacines and canids last shared an ancestor deep in the Mesozoic, yet the thylacine's long muzzle, carnassial-like tooth arrangement and slender limbs closely track the canid pattern. Morphometric comparisons of thylacine and grey wolf skulls find them harder to distinguish from each other than either is from many of its own closer relatives, and the resemblance is usually attributed to shared demands of catching and processing vertebrate prey.
The differences are still real. The thylacine could open its jaws to an extreme gape of about 80 degrees, its tail was stiff and thick-based in the marsupial manner rather than flexible, and both sexes had a pouch, the male's enclosing the scrotum. Bite-force analysis suggests a comparatively weak skull for its size, implying prey smaller than the sheep it was blamed for taking.
That blame drove a government bounty in Tasmania from 1888 to 1909, paying for more than two thousand carcasses. Disease, habitat change and hunting together ended the species; the last known animal died in 1936.