A British auction house is handling the sale of a second mounted thylacine head in as many months, after a family in London found the specimen, nicknamed Trevor, stashed under a bed.
Bristol-based auctioneer Andrew Stowe, from Auctioneum, said the family had kept the head hidden because they were 'genuinely quite frightened of it'. They realised what they had after reading news of a previous thylacine head sale.
'The story, as I understand it, is that they were reading the news and spotted the report of our previous example,' Mr Stowe said. 'I don't think they have ever gotten out of the bed as quick as they did that day to go and get it out.'
The latest find comes with some provenance. It is understood the specimen was shot in Sheffield, in Tasmania's north-west, in the early 1900s and brought to the UK in 1905, where it changed hands several times. A radiograph taken by a local vet confirmed the head as belonging to a thylacine.
Mr Stowe said unlike the first specimen, which had a bulbous head and googly eyes that led auctioneers to believe it was a fox, this latest taxidermied Tasmanian tiger had been sculpted well, likely by someone who had seen a thylacine in real life.
'It could do with some sympathetic restoration, but it is in good condition,' Mr Stowe said. 'One of its ears has come loose at some point, probably about 50 or 60 years ago, but it's present, so it is complete. There is not a googly eye in sight on this one.'
The find is the third-known mounted thylacine head in existence.
In August, UK collector James Cranfield purchased a mounted thylacine head after a heated bidding war. The head, sold in poor condition, had been listed as a fox's head and was expected to fetch between £30 ($57) to £50 ($95). It ended up selling for £62,600 ($120,000), including auction fees.
Mr Cranfield, who owns a curiosity shop in Essex, recognised the online 'fox' listing ahead of the auction as incorrect. At the time, he called the find 'a discovery of a lifetime', saying 'it is the holy grail of natural history collecting'.
Mr Stowe said while this second mounted thylacine head was still an exciting scientific discovery, the story was 'not as fun'.
'[That] was the story that everyone wants, something that lay undiscovered for so long and sells for lots of money. It was such a fantastic story,' he said. 'This one, it's already been authenticated, it's already been added to the database. It's the only one to have come up to have been done properly.'
The last-known thylacine died in captivity in Hobart on September 7, 1936, a date commemorated as World Threatened Species Day.
Taking to Instagram, Mr Cranfield said the discovery of two thylacines in the 90th year since the marsupial was declared extinct was 'incredible'.
'I'm so pleased that when I trusted my gut on a "fox head", and it subsequently made international news,' he said. 'This has made this third discovery possible and will hopefully mean that more specimens are discovered.'
About 815 thylacine specimens from around the world have been recorded by the International Thylacine Specimen Database (ITSD), ranging from a microscopic slide of tissue to a full mount. The UK holds the largest collection of thylacine specimens, mainly in museums and universities.
The latest thylacine head will go to auction on November 26.