Beast of Dean

[1] Despite several attempts to encounter, capture, or kill the beast in the early 19th century, no scientific evidence has been found to support the existence of the Beast of Dean or any similar creature in the Forest of Dean.

[1] Folktales alleging the beast existed in the forest appear to have their origins in the 18th or early 19th century.

The animal they were hunting was reported to be a boar large enough to fell trees and hedges.

[2] Wild boar can still be found in the Forest of Dean to this day,[3] but many 20th and early 21st Century references to the creature are made by "cryptozoologists", who presume the beast to be (or have been) a real animal that was unknown (or new) to science.

[1] In 2007, the science-fiction television series Primeval, re-imagined the Beast of Dean as a living gorgonopsid that arrived in the present day through a wormhole leading to the Permian Period.