The Tasmanian tiger, also called the thylacine, was a marsupial native to Australia and the island of Tasmania.
The carnivore was seen by farmers as a threat to sheep and therefore hunted, trapped and poisoned for government bounties.
"Many people, however, believe that bounty hunting alone could not have driven the thylacine extinct and therefore claim that an unknown disease epidemic must have been responsible," researcher Thomas Prowse, of Australia's University of Adelaide, said in a statement.
Using population models to simulate the direct effects of bounty hunting and habitat loss, the new study found that humans alone were responsible for the animal's doom.
The last wild Tasmanian tiger was captured in 1933 and taken to the Hobart Zoo, where it died three years later.