Loren Coleman

Loren Coleman

Update: New Clouded Leopard

Of course, the media has gone wild and over-reached a bit in highlighting the “new species” discovery of the Borneo/Sumatra clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi) as such a remarkable find in many news articles. Indeed, the cat was there all the time, and has been “in the books” for 184 years. Of course, as has been mentioned within previous comments, I first talked about the reclassification of the two clouded leopards via this blog, on December 15, 2006, here: “Clouded Leopards: Two Species.” It is exciting to find something that’s been under our noses all the time, but let’s be realistic [...]

Eastern Puma Survey Media Analysis

A copyright-free image of the cougar from Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, 1911. Do eastern pumas exist? Are they an endangered species? Should these “ghost cats” be removed from the endangered species list? Are the eastern subspecies actually different from the western subspecies? These are a few of the questions that the United States federal government will answer by the end of the year, they promise. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service announced some time ago it is formally reviewing the status of the eastern mountain lion to determine if the felid should stay on the [...]

Jim Jung Dies

Jim Jung, 54, an Illinois panther researcher and Fortean author passed away on March 15, 2007. He had for years gathered the disputed information that convinced him that black panthers and eastern cougars lived in his home state. As long as his website remains active, his cougar data on the web can be found here and here. Jung had just published his special look at the strange phenomena of southern Illinois, in the area north of Cairo called Egypt. He was also known, for the last decade, for his annual Southern Illinois almanac, The Waterman & Hill Traveller’s Companion. Scott [...]

New Debate Over Luneau Footage

You knew it was going to happen. The debate about the ivory-billed woodpecker’s re-discovery has boiled over to the frame by frame analyses, con and pro, of the 2004 Arkansas video on a level comparable to that we’ve seen with the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot footage. In the journal BMC Biology on March 13, 2007, the latest is a discussion of the frame by frame analysis of what has become known as the Luneau video by a Scottish scientist Martin Collinson. Collinson just is not buying the fact that the ivory-billed woodpecker has been found. He thinks the video is of another [...]

More Fossil News: Orthrozanclus reburrus

This is the reconstruction of Orthrozanclus reburrus, a previously unknown new species, as drawn by Marianne Collins. The precise arrangement of the anteriormost region remains somewhat conjectural. (Credit: Copyright AAAS-Science, 2007 / published in Science article co-authored by Dr. Jean-Bernard Caron, ROM Associate Curator, Invertebrate Palaeontology, Department of Natural History.) For more, see: Newly Identified Species Of Spiny Snail-like Creature, 505 Million Year Old, Described

No Friend of Sponge Bob!

There’s been another new marine species discovered in the eastern Pacific Ocean. This marine snail, Tylodina fungina, was collected in a dredge sample with its host sponge. This species feeds exclusively on a single species of sponge that exactly matches its bright yellow color. Despite being featured in field guides, very little is known about its biology. (Credit: Antonia Baeza, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute) For more, see: New Marine Species Discovered In Eastern Pacific