(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-12-27 19:33

The controversial photo of a rare South China tiger has been extricated from the local authority and sent to "state authoritative institution" for authenticity judgement, a forestry senior official said on Thursday.

State Forestry Administration spokesman Cao Qingyao called it "a breakthrough step", but he did not specify the identity of the institution.

The provincial forestry department had insisted the tiger in the photo existed in Zhenping County, although the China Photographers Society confirmed the images were not real.

In October, a farmer from Zhenping County, in north China's Shaanxi Province, claimed he snapped photos of a tiger in the forest near his home. The provincial forestry bureau later cited experts as saying that it was a South China tiger, a subspecies believed to have been extinct in the wild for more than three decades.

However, many scientists and Internet users have denounced the pictures as fake. Last month, one netizen posted online a picture of a tiger from a new year calendar and claimed the two tigers were identical.

Cao said earlier this month the administration reserved judgement on the authenticity of the controversial pictures, and said more concrete evidence was needed. An expert panel was dispatched to Zhenping County last month to carry out a field investigation.