STOCKHOLM: Scientists have for the first time recovered RNA from an extinct species, the Tasmanian tiger, raising hope for the resurrection of animals once thought lost forever, Stockholm University researchers said.

`RNA has never been extracted and sequenced from an extinct species before,` said Love Dalen, a Stockholm University professor of evolutionary genomics who co-led the project.

`The ability to recover RNA from extinct species constitutes a small step (toward) maybe being able to resurrect extinct species in the future,` he said.

Dalen and his team were able to sequence RNA molecules from a 130-year-old Tasmanian tiger specimen preserved at room temperature in Sweden`s Museum of Natural History.

With this they were able to reconstructskin and skeletal muscle RNA.

RNA is a molecule that is used to convey information from the genome to the rest of the cell about what it should do.

`If you`re going to resurrect an extinct animal, then you need to know where the genes are and what they do, and in what tissues they are regulated,` Dalen said, explaining the need for knowledge about both DNA and RNA.

The last known living Tasmanian tiger or thylacine, a carnivorous marsupial, died in captivity in 1936 at the Beaumaris Zoo in Tasmania.

After European colonisation of Australia, the animal was declared a pest and in 1888 a bounty was offered for each full-grown animal killed. Scientists have focused their de-extinction efforts on the Tasmanian tiger as its natural habitat in Tasmania is largely preserved.-AFP