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.
