Way back in the 1980s, archaeologists who excavated an ancient burial mound near Jacksonville found the remains of 22 people, plus an infant plus a puppy. Except it wasn’t a puppy. Thanks to someone at the Illinois State Museum, where the purported puppy was stashed for safekeeping, the remains have been identifi ed as a bobcat kitten that was carefully laid to rest with its paws together, shells and pendants made from bear teeth around its neck. Angela Perri was an intern at the state museum when she opened the box labled “puppy” four years ago and realized that it was a very big deal. “As soon as I saw the skull, I knew it was defi nitely not a puppy,” Perri, who is now an archaeologist in Germany, told Science magazine. The bobcat is the only animal ever found buried in mounds that prehistoric villagers reserved for humans and the only time that a wildcat has ever been found buried anywhere by members of the Hopewell culture, who lived in small villages in Illinois long before Christ was born, researchers say. “It shocked me to my toes,” Kenneth Farnsworth, a Hopewell expert at the Illinois State Archeological Survey told Science. Farnsworth and Perri recently published a paper on the fi nd, and it has received much attention from scientists, who speculate that there may have been an attempt to domesticate the young bobcat, or perhaps it has some sort of spiritual signifi cance. The bobcat made the Top 10 Discoveries of 2015 list published this week by Archeology magazine, along with the world’s oldest pretzel found in Germany and stone tools dug up in Africa believed to have been used by ancestors of human beings. Too bad the museum is closed, thanks to Gov. Bruce Rauner, who says the state can’t afford to operate it, even though it remains staffed. It would be nice to take a gander at the world’s most famous prehistoric kitty.