Cast your minds back to the Weird Weekend in August, this year attended by Aussies Rebecca and Mike who were spruiking their book, Australian Big Cats: An Unnatural History of Panthers.
On the August 17, CFZ Director Jon Downes announced that Danish Zoologist Lars Thomas had examined hair samples found in Huddisford Woods near Woolsery, and pronounced them to be leopard.
The hairs (which were found by Lars, naturalist and big cat researcher Jon McGowan and a team known as the Four-Teans) were offered to any research group or academic institution who wanted to try and verify Lars's findings.
The first person to contact Jon was Dr Ross Barnett from Durham University who has done DNA analysis on them, and has confirmed that they are Pantherine, probably leopard.
Dr Barnett is now carrying out further tests to establish the species and subspecies for certain and a full announcement by Jon will be made then.
Stay tuned!
In the meantime you can read about Lars's analysis at the Fortean Times website.
No comments:
Post a Comment