French cryptozoologist Michel Raynal passes along word on a new book of some interest to hominologists and others about a fake produced during a time reflective of today. It details the investigation involving the so-called Ameranthropoides loysi.

I posted earlier about the curious link between this year (2008) of so many hoaxes, and the strange similar nature of the events of 1929. The media hype in 1929 about the Ameranthropoid is comparative to that of the Georgia body from this summer.

The manuscript by Bernardo Urbani and Ángel L. Viloria (LibrosEnRed, 2008) can be found online here.

Here are the details on the volume:

Ameranthropoides loysi Montandon 1929: The History of a Primatological Fraud reviews the information published on the controversy of the discovery of an alleged Neotropical anthropoid ape, that resulted in one of the most notorious scientific frauds of the 20th Century. Such finding supposedly occurred either in 1917 or 1918 while oil prospecting in the forests of the Tarra River region, located in the southwestern part of Lake Maracaibo, Zulia state, Venezuela. This case was as much discussed as it was unresolved. Detailed analysis of the archival sources suggested that the naming of such a primate was a fraud orchestrated by the Swiss physician George Montandon and de Loys himself, resulting in one of the most notorious scientific frauds of the 20th Century. This investigation provides previously unpublished information about this case whose development seems to be resolved in Venezuela, through the account of a third witness, the Venezuelan physician Enrique Tejera.

Black Friday, 1929.

The media hype in 1929 about the Ameranthropoid is comparative to that of the Georgia Bigfoot body hoax from this summer (both occurring right before Stock Market crashes).