Overview
- A badly stuffed item first sold as a novelty “fox head” was bought at a UK market for about £50 and later identified by a collector as the head of a thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger.
- Competitive bidding at a Bristol auction produced a reported hammer price of £50,000 and an approximate total of £60,000 including buyer fees.
- The reported purchaser is a 38-year-old taxidermy and natural-history collector named in coverage as James Cranfield (also shown in some reports as Crawford), who says he recognised the skull and teeth features that pointed to a thylacine.
- Formal scientific verification and provenance checks have not yet been completed, but the buyer says he will pursue authentication and offer the head for academic and DNA research.
- The find is significant because the thylacine has been considered extinct since the last known individual died in Hobart Zoo in 1936 and only a small number of specimens survive, raising questions about private ownership, legal provenance and access for museums and scientists.