Artifacts

Mystery Tusk: Not A Circus Elephant

Fisherman Tim Winchenbach poses outside his home in Cushing, Maine, with a mysterious prehistoric tusk that was pulled up with a load of scallop shells on a New Bedford vessel fishing off Georges Bank in December 2006. Photos by Joel Page. Does this tusk come from a ten-thousand-years or older, long gone mammoth or mastodon? Along the coast of Maine, the news of this find has been a strange but popular story in the papers, on the local television channels, and of some note to lovers of curios and fossils. It is, needless to say, not especially cryptozoological, unless the [...]

Wunderkammer

Musei Wormiani Historia, the frontispiece from the Museum Wormianum depicting Ole Worm’s 17th Century cabinet of curiosities. Boing Boing co-editor and Cryptomundo correspondent David Pescovitz wrote a wonderful piece speaking of the chambers of wonders, the cabinets of curiosities, to wit, der Wunderkammer, which was published on New Year’s Day. As Xeni Jardin notes, his response was to the question: “What are you optimistic about?” David’s essay’s wonder-filled title is “We’re Recognizing That the World Is a Wunderkammer“, and some extracts from his thoughts spell out what I consider happening at Cryptomundo, The Anomalist, Boing Boing, and similar websites. David [...]

Maine Mutant #6 in 2006

An automobile travels the sparsely used Route 4 through the Turner, Maine, area, little knowing what it will meet around the next corner. It wasn’t a Stephen King novel, but a real-life incident that captured the media, first in Maine, then more globally last summer, into early fall. Lewiston, Maine’s Sun Journal published their 2006 year-in-review on the first day of the new year. Route 4′s “Mystery Animal” (a/k/a “Maine Mutant”) was on their list. Monday, January 1, 2007 Top stories of 2006 Tragedies dominated the tri-county news in 2006, with young people dying in car accidents, plane crashes, the [...]

More African Dino Art Deco

Friday, the one-two punch of Boing Boing and The Anomalist featuring my blog on “African Dinosaur Hunting: Art Deco Style,” got the story/link repeated and viewed far and wide. Some of the locations were very diverse: Professor Hex, Lesley at The Debris Field , Africa Art History, Spooky Paradigm, Planet Kwekje, Weird History, Zapptor, Kung Fu Action Theatre, Frederick County Report, and many others. Yes, I did listen to you regarding a desire to read the newsprint. It is difficult to do, from the jpegs of Art Deco African dinosaur hunting articles shared earlier, so here below you will find [...]

Maine’s Mystery Beast Banner

The Maine Mystery Beast banner remains safely in the Pine Tree State! Rogier van Bakel, his wife Debbie, and their two delightful daughters (one shown above) came by over this Christmas weekend to drop off the unique Paul Szauter sideshow art, entitled the Maine’s Mystery Beast banner. Van Bakel is a well-traveled, well-spoken journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Wired, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, and other publications. We had a good talk about all matters of cryptozoology and Forteana, and I showed them some of the items around my in-house museum. Of [...]

Top Ten Creepy Fossil Finds of 2006

Top Ten Creepy Fossil Finds of 2006 by Loren Coleman, coauthor, Creatures of the Other Edge. As often happens with fossil finds, sometimes they are stored away, forgotten, rediscovered, even exhibited, but then all of a sudden, an old find experiences a grand new awareness. The fossil is significant again. Or the fossil might be a recent or actual new find gaining its fifteen minutes of popular media fame, often before the journal articles are written. Such has been the case regarding the following selections, all from extinct species (supposedly). It is a roundup of certainly a unique collection of [...]

Going, Going, Gone

The traveling exhibition, Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale, Noon-5 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday; closes Wednesday, December 20, 2006. H&R Block Artspace at Kansas City Art Institute, 16 E. 43rd, Kansas City, Missouri (816-561-5563).