00:00At first glance, it looked like an unusual piece of taxidermy, but simply because of its eyes.
00:06But the head sold as a fox turned out to be something far rarer.
00:10A preserved head of the phylocene or Tasmanian tiger.
00:14My name is Andrew Stowe. I'm auctioneer here at Auctionium in Bristol.
00:19I'm holding probably one of the most important things we have ever sold.
00:24This is actually a taxidermy head of a Tasmanian tiger.
00:28They actually went extinct officially in 1937. The last one died in captivity in 1936.
00:36There are only around 700 known specimens of the creature in existence, and about 100 of those are taxidermied.
00:43Because it went extinct so long ago, very often samples were mounted on base plates that didn't match the form
00:52because the people taxidermying it didn't know what it actually looked like.
00:55We don't know how it got here in the UK, and I suspect we never will.
00:59But it's obviously had a life, and it's going to go on and become an important piece of natural history.
01:05The thylacine was a carnivorous moss soup pill native to Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea.
01:10Mainland populations disappeared around 2,000 years ago, while a population survived in Tasmania in the modern era.
01:16The last known thylacine died at Hobart Zoo in 1936.
01:21This actually came in to us from a gentleman who had bought it at an antiques market fairly locally
01:25for the princely sum of £50, and we just sold it in our auction for £50,000.
01:33He was told it was a fox. At some point, somebody had stuck some googly eyes in it,
01:37and I actually think it's thanks to those googly eyes that this was purchased and brought to the attention of
01:43the world.
01:43He saw them. It made him laugh. He bought it, and he brought it in to us to sell,
01:48and it went through auction and caused quite a stir.
01:51The auction was incredibly exciting. The room went silent as it came up.
01:55Bids were being shouted out by bidders in the room,
01:58and it climbed all the way from £5,000, £10,000, £20,000, all the way to £50,000.
02:04It's an incredibly important discovery, and one that I hope goes on to further research
02:10and further scientific study into these amazing, once amazing creatures.
02:15This is just one of those proper auction stories.
02:18Somebody has bought something at a market for a relatively small amount of money,
02:22and for it to go on to become not only incredibly valuable,
02:26but incredibly historically important as well.
02:28It is the wonderful auction tale that everybody wants.
02:33The vendor is completely shocked at how much it's sold for,
02:37and it's wonderful to play a very small part in making sure this important specimen is kept,
02:42preserved, and used for scientific purposes as well.
02:45James Cranfield, a natural history and taxidermy collector,
02:49travelled from Essex to Bristol and won the bidding battle.
02:52He describes the discovery as the holy grail of natural history collecting,
02:55and wants to make the head available for scientific research.
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