Museum find proves exotic ‘big cat’ prowled British countryside a century ago

I’ve been hanging on to this piece of news for far too long now (since April, it turns out – you know, because I’ve had so many blog entries of late)

The rediscovery of a mystery animal in a museum’s underground storeroom proves that a non-native ‘big cat’ prowled the British countryside at the turn of the last century.

The animal’s skeleton and mounted skin was analysed by a multi-disciplinary team of Durham University scientists and fellow researchers at Bristol, Southampton and Aberystwyth universities and found to be a Canadian lynx — a carnivorous predator more than twice the size of a domestic cat.

via Museum find proves exotic ‘big cat’ prowled British countryside a century ago.

What I love about this is when I was a kid, I was a big reader of books from the 001 end of the library (Dewey fans, represent!). The hunt for lost cities, UFO’s, bigfoot, all were fair game in my reading. In particular, I remember one book dedicating an entire section to these legendary black cats, although I seem to recall it mixing the cats and Spring Heeled Jack together somehow. Anyway, its almost reassuring to see what was a cryptozoological mystery actually resolved without people just being called crazy.

Now, back to my hunt for Sasquatch…