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(Image: GETTY/SWNS)

The dismembered carcass found last month in Bideford may have been a victim of the Exmoor Beast.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) said the discovery was made on January 12 in Powler’s Piece, which is Forestry Commission woodland.

And the way it died makes CFZ believe a dangerous predator killed it.

CFZ director Jon Downes told Devon Live: “The animal appears to have been killed with the assailant clamping its jaws over the muzzle of the sheep, subduing and suffocating it.

“This is the way that big cats characteristically kill their prey and it is very exciting corroborative evidence suggesting that one or more big cats is loose in the area."

(Image: SWNS)

The mass of bones are going to be sent to a Danish lab for examination.

The Daily Star recently teamed up with the CFZ, an organisation which investigates unexplained mysteries, to hunt for the elusive big cat which is sometimes called the Devon Devil.

The creature is said to roam moorland between north Devon and west Somerset called Exmoor.

Although the stuff of legend and sometimes ridicule, it has been theorised that following the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976 which banned keeping dangerous wild animals without a licence, there were potentially big cats released by their owners into the countryside.

Creatures such as pumas are notoriously elusive and can easily hide away in a vast rural area, experts say.

(Image: NC) (Image: CASCADE)

Devon’s neighbouring county Cornwall also has its own mystery monster – The Bodmin Beast – which has been the subject of numerous sightings.

And Benjamin Mee, owner of the Dartmoor Zoo near Plymouth, whose journey was the subject of a Hollywood film We Bought A Zoo, has his own theory.

He claimed that three pumas which were due to arrive at the zoo after Plymouth Zoo closed in 1978 never turned up and were released into the wild.

"Some say they were released from the old zoo either by mistake or on purpose – we just don't know – while others say they were being transported here at the time from the zoo in Plymouth,” he said.

"I have no knowledge of the circumstances.

“But at the time there were three pumas that should have been here at Dartmoor Zoo that were not.”