Here’s story that is right out of Antiques Road Show:
Bill Warren of Fallbrook, California, purchased a unusual pelt for $5.
After doing some research online, he thinks it is a thylacine pelt, which isvalued at around $70,000.
But he can’t sell it out of state because of federal law that bans he sale of endangered species.
Which is very strange, because this species is “officially extinct.”
The original owner purchased the skin 30 years ago in Boston, but no one had really thought it might be something unique.
However, I hate to be a naysayer here, but Loren Coleman at Cryptomundo thinks we should another possiblity– the zebra duiker:
Zebra duikers are small antelopes native to Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire in West Africa.
Liberia historically has had close connections to the US. 1822. the American Colonization Society brought free African Americans to Liberia to settle in West Africa. Although Liberia has been a free nation since 1847, it has always had close connections to the United States.
It would make sense that a skin of a zebra duiker would make it to Boston. Boston is a major port, and its community would have included various sorts of people who would have traveled to Liberia, be they industrialists, missionaries, or just good, old-fashioned academics.
It would make more sense that a zebra duiker pelt would be in Boston garage sale than a thylacine.
Anyway, we won’t know until more sophisticated analysis of the pelt is performed.
But my hunch is it is a zebra duiker.
Boston garage sale???
How does the story go from Fallbrook California to Boston???
The guy bought it in a Boston garage sale. Then he sold it at a garage sale in Rainbow, Calfornia. The guy who has it now just happens to live in Fallbrook, California.
hi,
i live in a town in western australia where there is still the occasional sighting of what is wideley believed to be thylacines. hate to say it, but that skin is also way too small to be that of a thylacine. would be really exciting if it was though!!
You know they are/were smaller when they are/were younger. That’s not a very good argument.
I lean toward it being a Zebra duiker.
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I’ve been both studying and re- creating thylacines as artworks here in Tasmania for years and have seen and touched thylacine skins .
So here’s my take on it ,the stripes on close inspection tend to break continuity at the spinal axis consistently toward the neck ,with the fur changing mid back toward the shoulders into a slightly longer and darker Maine stopping between the ears