With its googly eyes, lumpy forehead, and awkward almost-smile, the strange, taxidermied fox head at the antique market was funny enough to throw down 50 quid on. When the buyer later sold it at auction, they were stunned to see it go for 1,000 times more than they'd paid for it. That's because this was no fox. This extremely rare specimen was instead the head of an extinct species."I collect weird and wonderful fox heads – good, bad, and the ugly – to show the differing qualities of taxidermy over the years and by different taxidermists," James Cranfield, a natural-history curiosities dealer in the UK, told ScienceAlert.James Cranfield with the so-called 'fox head'. (James Cranfield/@thetaxidermist)So when this "19th-century fox head" listing turned up among Cranfield's daily auction alerts, its goofy charm initially caught his eye – until he took a closer look."When I clicked on it and it opened up to a bigger picture, it was like a bolt of lightning to my brain and eyes that it wasn't a fox," said Cranfield."I immediately thought, 'that looks like a thylacine'."The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) is – or was – a carnivorous marsupial that resembles a large dog. Commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger due to the striped pattern along its back, the creature was once widespread across Australia and even as far north as New Guinea. But by the time European settlers arrived, the thylacine was confined to the island of Tasmania. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, they were considered a pest to livestock and actively hunted, with the Tasmanian government even offering bounties on them.By the time this decision was reversed and protections offered, it was too late. The last known individual thylacine died in a Tasmanian zoo on 7 September 1936.