{"id":1045151,"date":"2026-09-05T15:27:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T15:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1045151\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T15:27:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T15:27:15","slug":"antique-fox-head-turns-out-to-be-holy-grail-of-extinct-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1045151\/","title":{"rendered":"Antique ‘fox head’ turns out to be ‘holy grail’ of extinct species"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was the Fantastic Mr. Faux.<\/p>\n

A UK antique collector was shocked after realizing a taxidermied \u201cfox head\u201d was actually the supremely rare bust of an extinct predator called a Tasmanian Tiger.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will never find anything better,\u201d the curious cranium\u2019s owner James Cranfield, a natural history relics dealer, told the BBC<\/a> of the once-in-a-lifetime find.<\/p>\n

The incredible saga began innocuously enough when an anonymous seller bought the artifact for around $67 at a county fair because they were amused by its googly eyes and cartoonish smile, Science Alert reported.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"ThylacineCranfield identified the Tasmanian Tiger head (pictured) by counting the number of incisors. Auctioneum<\/p>\n

So they were naturally quite surprised after putting it up for bidding at the Auctioneum in Bristol and seeing it go for 1,000 times that.<\/p>\n

Cranfield, who specialized in collecting \u201cweird and wonderful fox heads\u201d to demonstrate diversity in taxidermy, had reportedly been intrigued after discovering the \u201c19th century fox head\u201d while scrolling an auction site.<\/p>\n

Upon taking a closer look, he realized that it was something far more special. \u201cWhen I clicked on it and it opened up to a bigger picture, it was like a bolt of\u00a0lightning\u00a0to my brain and eyes that it wasn\u2019t a fox,\u201d the 38-year-old exclaimed. \u201cI immediately thought, \u2018that looks like a thylacine.’\u201d<\/p>\n

The thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger was a carnivorous marsupial that resembled a large dog but with a distinctive striped pattern on its back. Once distributed across Australia and even as far north as Papua New Guinea, the predator had been confined to the island of Tasmania by the time European settlers arrived.<\/p>\n

It was subsequently pushed to the brink by hunting, disease and habitat loss. The last thylacine died at the Tasmanian zoo in 1936.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Cranfield could not identify it from pictures alone, so, on the day of the sale, he and his fiance got up at the crack of dawn and drove three and a half hours to the auction house to get a closer look. <\/p>\n

Thankfully, the head, which was placed on a table among \u201call sorts of bric-a-brac and pottery,\u201d told the eager collector exactly what he \u201cwanted to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BlackBlack-and-white 1935 footage of the now-extinct Tasmanian tiger.<\/p>\n

He said the \u201cgiveaway\u201d was that it boasted eight upper incisors as opposed to six like with a fox. \u201cWe went and sat in the car, I said \u2018this is unbelievable, this is the holy grail, we\u2019ve got to get it,’\u201d Cranfield.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, following a bidding war, the determined taxidermy buff secured the \u201cpriceless\u201d tiger mount for $85,000, plus over $13,500 in fees, The Times Of London reported.<\/a><\/p>\n

To ensure he hadn\u2019t paid a fortune for a run-of-the-mill fox noggin, Cranfield gave the specimen a once-over with an X-ray and CT-scans, confirming that it was the bonafide artifact.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only is it a genuine thylacine head, the X-rays have revealed the most perfect, pristine skull within the mount,\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cI\u2019m very pleased that now that I haven\u2019t got egg on my face for spending [so much] on a fox head. I could have never shown my face in the community or online or anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Auctioneum\u2019s Andrew Stowe was equally floored by the find.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was quite a shock to discover we were sitting on something so special,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is unbelievably rare. Even replicas of skulls or bones sell for thousands of pounds. To find a complete item like this is almost unheard of, especially here in the UK.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the International Thylacine Specimen Database, there are around 815 Thylacine fox specimens, ranging from slides to full mounts.<\/p>\n

However, as far as they know, there is only one other head \u2014 and no one knows where it is.<\/p>\n

Cranfield said he plans to keep the mount \u2014 not as a trophy \u2014 but as an educational took that scientists can use to glean more insight into its mysterious owner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want everyone to know it exists so academics and scientists can contact me to study it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt will be invaluable to science and I want to make it available to institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was the Fantastic Mr. Faux. A UK antique collector was shocked after realizing a taxidermied \u201cfox head\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1045152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[27],"tags":[86130,16438,22911,1165,159,67,132,68,39590,837],"class_list":["post-1045151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-antiques","tag-auctions","tag-foxes","tag-lifestyle","tag-science","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-weird-but-true","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1045151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1045152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1045151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1045151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1045151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}