A newly released film has offered a final glimpse of the Tasmanian tiger which has been extinct for more than 84 years.
The last known thylacine tiger, Benjamin, died from exposure at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart in 1936, just two months after the species was granted protected status.
A year before his death Benjamin was filmed for the travelogue 'Tasmania the Wonderland' by filmmaker Sidney Cook in 1935.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) released the 21-second clip of the travelogue so that the public can enjoy a glimpse of the "beautiful marsupial" tiger.
The clips shows Benjamin pacing his cage at the Beaumaris Zoo while Zookeeper Arthur Reid and an associate rattles Benjamin's cage in an attempt to get a reaction from the tiger.
"[The Tasmanian Tiger] is now very rare, being forced out of its natural habitat by the march of civilisation," says the narrator.
A spokesman from the NFSA spoke of how rare the footage was.
"While the NFSA holds preservation film copies of much of the known surviving footage of the thylacine, the search continues," said the spokesman.
"Remaining to be uncovered are footage of thylacine in colour, roaming in the wild - or most hopefully - film with location sound that reveals any sound made by the animal."
The surviving nine-minute travelogue is incomplete and has no end credits, said the NFSA.
The spokesman added that there are "fewer than a dozen source films" of the elusive tiger and all footage derives from thylacines held in captivity and photographed at two locations - the zoo in Hobart and the London Zoo.
It is estimated that there were around 5,000 thylacines in Tasmania at the time of the European settlement but excessive hunting and disease helped drive the species towards extinction.
