Beast of Dean


The Beast of Dean is an animal said to live, or to have once lived, in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England. It was originally thought to resemble a wild boar, but abnormally large in size. At that time of its first sightings, wild boar were extinct in Britain.

History

Farmers from the village of Parkend undertook an expedition to capture and kill the creature, in 1802 but found nothing. The animal they were hunting was reported to be a boar large enough to fell trees and hedges.
Beginning in the early 1990s, a number of Phantom cats were sighted in the Forest of Dean. The identity of these "Black Panthers" was thrown into further confusion in 2002 when a large Wild Boar with black fur was killed in a collision along the A40 near the town of Over.

In fiction

In the science-fiction television series Primeval, the Beast of Dean turns out to be a gorgonopsid that arrived in the present day through a wormhole leading to the Permian period.