Cryptid Quagga?

An article in the Edmonton Journal, December 13, 2006, concerns an alleged quagga, a South Africa species with genetic links to zebras said to be extinct for over 100 years.

This specific equine has been missing for over two weeks from a farm located at Carrot Creek, a little way west of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

The eight-year-old stallion, named Zebastian, is a brown zebra with black stripes, and its owner fears the animal’s unique looks will tempt area hunters who don’t know how special it is.

[Patricia] O’Neil bought Zebastian seven years ago at an auction near Innisfail, thinking he was a hybrid horse.

When Zebastian fathered a foal, O’Neil said she sent his DNA for testing at the University of Phoenix. She said Zebastian has the DNA markers of a quagga zebra, a species that has been extinct for more than 100 years.

“I am sure the zoo industry and zoologists will be very interested in that finding,” Valley Zoo operations supervisor Dean Treichel said.

Treichel has been working with the zoo for 28 years and says the only Alberta zebras he is aware of live in the province’s two zoos. He is skeptical.

Update: Photographs of Zebastian have been forwarded to us. He does not exhibit the classic Quagga striping, but that of a zebra-horse hybrid.

The public domain images shown are an old photograph and a print of the known (extinct) quagga from Africa, below the new ones sent in of Zebastian.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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