Loren Coleman

Loren Coleman

Scott Norman’s Pterosaur Sighting: Update

There is more data to be added to the initial Pterosaur sighting info you read about here. Chad Arment has posted the full information he has on Scott Norman’s sighting in his posting “The Scott Norman ‘Pterosaur’ Sighting: His Own Words.” Chad shares Scott’s description of what he sighted: The animal I saw had an 8-10 foot wing span, the wings were bat-like in shape, the inside had that wavy type of look. The body was about 5-6 feet in length, the neck about 1-2 feet in length, the head was about four feet in length, and the head was [...]

Hobbits Debate Heats Up

The Homo floresiensis debate has been reenergized again with the publication of a new paper in the journal Proc. R. Soc. B doi:10.1098/rspb.2007.1488. The following is a clickable link to the full paper, the abstract of which is below the link. Are the small human-like fossils found on Flores human endemic cretins? by Peter J. Obendorf, Charles E. Oxnard and Ben J. Kefford. Fossils from Liang Bua ( LB) on Flores, Indonesia, including a nearly complete skeleton ( LB1) dated to 18 kyr BP, were assigned to a new species, Homo floresiensis. We hypothesize that these individuals are myxoedematous endemic [...]

Evolution of Yeti

Even the Los Angeles Times is getting in step with the significance of cryptozoology. They have deemed, of all the programs being broadcast tonight, the following as their “Wednesday Highlight”: YETI OR NOT? The Abominable Snowman is sought on the season premiere of “Destination Truth,” at 10 p.m. on Sci Fi. This seems like an appropriate time, therefore, to bring up the issue of the “Evolution of Yeti” within popular culture. I’ll leave for another time a more formal discussion of the biological evolution of Yeti, and their place in the biological scheme of things. But how about the reflection [...]

The Wolves of Shelburne

The Boston Globe Rare gray wolf, thought extinct in area, appears in western Mass. By Stephanie Reitz Associated Press Writer / March 4, 2008 SPRINGFIELD, Mass.—When more than a dozen lambs and sheep were slaughtered on a Shelburne farm last fall, wildlife officials suspected either a wolf that had escaped from captivity or a rogue mutt on a hungry rampage. But after the culprit animal was killed and examined, they found themselves with a bigger mystery: How did a wild eastern gray wolf, an endangered species absent from the state for more than a century, find its way to western [...]

New Giant Fossil Bat

Reconstruction of Witwatia schlosseri, a new species of very large bat from the Fayum district of Egypt. (Credit: Drawing by Bonnie Miljour) In a recent issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, scientists report on the discovery of six new bat species dating to around 35 million years ago, which sheds new light on the early evolution of bats. It took over 25 years of fieldwork to collect the 33 specimens that form the basis of the new study. “That translates to a little over one specimen per year – a lot of effort for a single fossil,” said Erik [...]

Scott Norman: Pterosaur Eyewitness

People are remembering Scott Norman in their own ways. Reopn researcher J. D. Whitcomb has sent along the following contribution to Cryptomundo: I too was shocked to learn of Scott’s passing. To those who knew nothing about Scott except for his apparent failure to find a living dinosaur, we can correct a misunderstanding: Scott did see, in the Southwest Pacific, at 2:00 a.m., July 19, 2007, from a distance of twenty feet, an apparent pterosaur. Whitcomb points to these two sources, here and here. The exact quotes from Scott are: “Scott described a flying organism with a wingspan of 8-10 [...]

Crypto-Belfast Rocks!

Not just another night in Belfast: Above, the Wild Safari company’s Megatherium, the Giant Ground Sloth, is the 4.5 inch replica that David Oren used to ask the people of the Amazon about what they were seeing in the jungle. Mr. Orrin Harding, at my talk, showed a special interest in the model, and the irony of his name and Dr. Oren’s was not lost on him. Belfast is a city in Waldo County, Maine, with a population of 6,381 (2000 census). So close to the ocean, located at the mouth of the Passagassawakeag River on Penobscot Bay, you can [...]

The Lion Of Nottingham

Why did the Maned Mystery Cat cross the road in front of the bus? Obviously, to get to the other side. It was bound to happen. After all those years of my gathering accounts of “Maned Mystery Cats” that look like African lions in North America, now comes word of one from the United Kingdom. Are there escaped mundane lions afoot in the Nottingham forests, or are these sighted animals in the UK of Panthera atrox (above), as noted in-depth in Mysterious America? The newspaper, the Retford Trader and Guardian published a wee notice on February 25, 2008, that an [...]

Farewell, Scott Norman by Matt Bille

Who is Scott T. Norman? Those not involved in cryptozoology won’t know, and perhaps won’t care. But they should. Scott, who died this past week from a blood clot at the too-young age of 45, is an example of an overlooked figure in science these days, the dedicated amateur enthusiast. Such people have always been the unsung heroes of science. With the exception of some specialized groups (bird-counters and asteroid hunters come to mind), 21st-century science tends to pay little heed to the amateur. Scott was enraptured by cryptozoology only in the last decade of his tragically short life, but [...]

What’s In Your Yeti Collection?

Henry Stokes is to be congratulated for taking his passion for Yeti, and turning it into an important and significant online archive of Yeti in popular culture. His site, “I Love the Yeti” definitely deserves your visits, now and then. Of course, being a devotee of the Abominable Snowmen, Snowwomen, and Snowpeople, in general, myself, I love Henry’s love site. But I am always interested in pulling the curtain aside. So, the other day, I asked Henry to send me a photograph of his own personal collection of Yeti and related kin collectibles. He did and also posted it at [...]