A new French cryptozoology book, Guide Des Animaux Cachés, due out in late October 2009, discusses some interesting evidence for prehistoric elephants still existing in Africa. (The book will be available for sale in the new museum shop at the public location of the International Cryptozoology Museum.)

The author Philippe Coudray theorizes that surviving extinct elephants may exist by pointing to a piece of “rare physical evidence,” found in Ethiopia in 1904, for his radical new stance in cryptozoology. He notes that the discovered “tusk” measuring “72 cm along its curve and 56 cm in a straight line” was found “unfossilized,” demonstrating that this animal “had not lived that very long ago.”

Furthermore, he points out that it is “ivory; it is a tooth, and not a horn. According to the structure of its ivory, zoologists think it belongs to an animal in the proboscideans (elephant) family.”

The proboscideans are species of the large, herbivorous mammals, of the order Proboscidea, that have a trunk; that is, the elephants.

As the structure of the tusk appears to point downward, as shown in Coudray’s illustration (below), the species of elephant may be one known in the fossil record, as the guide mentions. This prehistoric elephant is known as the Deinotherium, which was the size of the present African elephant. The cryptid species may be smaller.

Philippe Coudray’s book gives a variety of cryptoelephant drawings, shown below, which I have mixed here with various proboscidean replicas.

The cover of Philippe Coudray’s new book.

Philippe Coudray drawing of the Deinotherium-like African cryptid.

Bullyland’s Deinotherium. (My quest for this rare German-made replica continues.) Radman photo, with permission.

Bullyland’s Deinotherium and other related species. Radman photo, with permission.

Wild Safari’s well-done collectibles, Arsinoitherium (a rhino-like elephant relative, above) and Ambelodon (below).

Wild Safari’s entire collection of extinct mammals, plus the Safari Ltd Carnegie mammoth. Boki photo, with permission.

Another Philippe Coudray drawing of a cryptid elephant reported in the shallow waters of Zaire.

More images from Guide Des Animaux Cachés and more info on the book here.

(Thanks for translation assistance from Patrick Huyghe.)

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