A mounted animal head that appeared to be little more than an old, poorly made fox has turned out to be something extraordinarily rare. British collector James Cranfield paid £62,000 for the specimen at a UK auction after spotting a detail that other bidders had missed, its teeth did not belong to a fox. X-rays have now confirmed what Cranfield suspected. Hidden beneath the stuffing and taxidermy was an almost complete skull belonging to a thylacine, the extinct marsupial also known as the Tasmanian tiger. The discovery has transformed an obscure auction-house curiosity into a scientifically significant specimen. The skull is intact and in remarkably good condition, despite the exterior being described as a rather crude or “naive” mount. The specimen is now expected to be added to the International Thylacine Specimen Database, while scientists are also interested in obtaining DNA from it.
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