A surprising discovery was made in 2001. A jar containing a preserved baby Tasmanian tiger was found in the Australian Museum. The jar had been sitting in the museum since 1866! Luckily, it had been preserved in alcohol rather than another kind of preservative. The alcohol did not destroy its DNA, so that gave researchers the idea to try to use its genes to clone a Tasmanian tiger. There was a breakthrough in 2002 when scientists managed to make duplicates of sample genes from that baby tiger – the first step toward reproducing the full DNA of the animal.