Museum find proves exotic ‘big cat’ prowled British countryside a century ago
Embargoed until 00.01 BST on Thursday, April 25, 2013 WITH IMAGES ON REQUEST 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. The research, published today in the academic