Composite Films has painted the longest video of the last known Tasmanian wolf, the largest marsupial predator that has survived into the 20th century. The 80-second film was filmed at the Hobart Zoo in Australia in 1933, three years before the animal's death. The National Archives of Photo and Audio Documents of Australia writes about this on its website.
The Tasmanian wolf (Thylacinus cynocephalus) is an extinct marsupial mammal native to Australia and New Guinea. These animals lived in Tasmania until the 20th century, and the last member of the species, known as Benjamin, died at the Hobart Zoo (Australia) in 1936.
Scientists know how these animals looked from the rock carvings of the aborigines of the continent, descriptions of British naturalists of the 19th and 20th centuries, stuffed animals preserved in museums around the world, as well as a dozen short black and white videos.
Australia's National Photo and Audio Archive decided to colorize the longest of these videos, 80 seconds long. Naturalist David Fly captured Benjamin, the last marsupial wolf who was kept in the zoo until his death. The video is dated December 1933.
The archive specialists scanned the negative and sent it to Composite Films in Paris. According to Samuel François-Steininger, the specialists used neural network algorithms, 2D animation, digital video restoration and other modern technologies to colorize the video. "To achieve this result, it took us more than 200 hours of work," - said the specialist.