A pickled "dragon" that looks as if it might once have flown around Hogwarts has been found in a garage in Oxfordshire.

Yesterday the baby dragon, in a sealed 30in jar, was in the office of Allistair Mitchell, who runs a marketing company in Oxford. He was asked to investigate by his friend, David Hart, from Sutton Courtenay, who discovered it.

A metal tin found with the dragon contained paperwork in old-fashioned German of the 1890s. Mr Mitchell speculates that German scientists may have attempted to use the dragon to hoax their English counterparts in the 1890s, when rivalry between the countries was intense.

"At the time, scientists were the equivalent of today's pop stars. It would have been a great propaganda coup for the Germans if it had come off.

"I've shown the photos to someone from Oxford University and he thought it was amazing. Obviously he could not say if it was real and wanted to do a biopsy."

The documents suggest that the Natural History Museum turned the dragon away, possibly because they suspected it was a trick, and sent it to be destroyed. But it appears a porter intercepted the jar and took it home. The papers suggest the porter may have been Frederick Hart - David Hart's grandfather.

Mr Mitchell said: "The dragon is flawless, from the tiny teeth to the umbilical cord. It could be made from indiarubber, because Germany was the world's leading manufacturer of it at the time, or it could be made of wax. It has to be fake. No one has ever proved scientifically that dragons exist. But everyone who sees it immediately asks, 'Is it real?' "

Yesterday the Natural History Museum said that it was interested in following up the find.

Notes by Editor Stephanie Relfe (1/31/04):

(1) A one minute X-ray will answer the question instantly. lf there is NO X-ray taken, we have a coverup. In all likelihood, an X-ray analysis has already been done...expect a denial later on.

(2) Okay, they didn't X-Ray it. Instead, it was later claimed the baby dragon was a hoax, supposedly to promote a book. Phew!!! Now I am a relieved (ha!). Does anyone really believe that the powers that be would really tell us this is a real dragon? And scare the living daylights out of half of the world's population? When reptilians and draconians control the media? And it's legal for the media to lie?

(2) If this is a hoax, why would they even think of adding an umbilical cord? Afer all, everyone 'knows' that reptiles come from eggs. It's humans, and I guess humanoids, who have umbilical cords. For this reason, we believe that this is the real thing.

(3) I guess the Draconians didn't appreciate me posting this. When I posted this page, I called it "baby dragon draconian" and then I posted it to the net using file transfer protocol that I had done dozens of times before. To my amazement, when I went to the net to see my page, nothing was there. And yet, I could see it on my own browzer. I then changed the name to something which did not include "dragon" or "draconian" in the URL, and hey presto - the page appeared.

(4) After I corrected this - ALL my images vanished!!!! I had to reload every single image!!!! This has certainly never happened before. I couldn't have done this because this ftp program is set up so I can't delete a whole folder - you have to delete each file individually.

(5) PLEASE save a copy of this article and especially of the picture on your computer!!!! (To save a picture, right click and choose 'save picture as')

(6) I saw a note somewhere that the baby dragon is THREE FOOT HIGH. If anyone can send me that link, please do so.

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