Another 'Thylacine' sighting

A tasmanian tiger or thylacine ran across a road north of Colac about 12.50am last Monday, according to Warrion man Steven Bennett. Mr Bennett said he was driving between Cressy and Warrion when he spotted the animal, believed to have been extinct since 1936. "It ran across the road in front of me (and) paused before it went into the bushes and long grass (on the side of the road),'' he said. The 24-year-old said the animal's stripes, tail and hind legs convinced him it was not a dog, feral cat or fox.A Tasmanian tiger ``is pretty much the only thing I can think of to explain it,'' Mr Bennett said.``It was a fawnish colour and it didn't have a bushy tail _ it's tail went straight out behind it. You always see foxes out here and normally they move low to the ground this was more like a horse in the way it trotted across the road.``I didn't get that much of a look at its head but it was a little bit taller than a bull mastiff and quite slim.''The sighting has excited researcher Michael Moss, who has been searching for the animals for about a decade. Mr Moss has been using a body-heat activated camera in the Otways and Gippsland for the past 18 months in the hopes ofcapturing evidence of the Tasmanian tigers and panthers rumoured to live in the forests.

He said Mr Bennett's sighting was the second one in the past four weeks _ two women travelling near Anglesea reported seeing a thylacine on December 20. ``He comes across as very credible.''Mr Moss said he was disappointed he had not had any luck with his automatic camera set-up in the Otways or Gippsland but remained convinced of the existence of big cats and Tasmanian tigers in the area.His own 1998 footage of what he believes to be a thylacine was recently used in a documentary and he has details on 38 big cat sightings over the past three years.