Breaking News

Moa-Nalo Superducks

Artist’s conception of the moa-nalo examples, Thambetochen chauliodous, and Ptaiochen pau. Image by Stanton F. Fink. Since the dodo was visited here yesterday, our island-hopping journey might as well continue with a view of the Hawaiian flightless birds, the moa-nalo. Moa-nalo are a group of extinct aberrant, goose-like ducks that formerly lived on the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific. They were the major herbivores on most of these islands for the last 3 million years or so, until they became extinct after human settlement. (Yes, the storyline sounds familiar.) The moa-nalo (the name literally means “lost fowl”; an “s” is [...]

Trailcam Photographs Rare Golden Cat

Chad Arment, noting this is not really a separate species, despite what the media is reporting, passes along this breaking news from Bhutan’s daily Kuensel Newspaper for June 11, 2008: A rare morph of the Asiatic golden cat (the ocelot morph) has been sighted in the high altitude mountains of the Jigme Singye Wangchuck national park, which nature conservationists are calling another feather in the cap of Bhutan’s conservation efforts. The ocelot morph is considered a separate species of wild cat. Two pictures of the rare ocelot morph were captured by an intensive camera trapping exercise targeted for tigers and [...]

Unicorn Deer Born

This undated photo provided by the Center of Natural Sciences in Prato, Italy, Wednesday, June 11, 2008, shows a deer with a single “horn” (really an antler) in the center of its head. The one-year-old Roe Deer – nicknamed “Unicorn” – was born in captivity in the research center’s park in the Tuscan town of Prato, near Florence, Gilberto Tozzi, director of the Center of Natural Sciences, said. He is believed to have been born with a genetic flaw; his twin has two antlers. (AP Photo/Center of Natural Sciences) For more on this breaking story, see here and here. Thanks [...]

New Dodos

The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) was a flightless bird endemic to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, and went extinct several centuries ago, we are told. But there remains some controversy surrounding the extinction date of the dodo. In Nature 426, 245 (20 November 2003), David L. Roberts and Andrew R. Solow write in their paper, “Flightless birds: When did the dodo become extinct?” that “the extinction of the Dodo is commonly dated to the last confirmed sighting in 1662, reported by shipwrecked mariner Volkert Evertsz” (Evertszoon). Other sources, however, suggest the date is 1681. Roberts & Solow point out that [...]

Woolly Mammoths: Two Subspecies Discovered

Andrea Thompson, a senior writer at Live Science has written an interesting article on a new subspecies discovery regarding woolly mammoths. Two genetically distinct groups of woolly mammoths once roamed northern Siberia, a new study suggests, with one group dying out long before humans showed up. The finding suggests humans were not the only reason for the beasts’ demise, as some have suggested. Scientists had long thought that woolly mammoths were one large homogeneous group, but an international group of scientists studied the mitochondrial DNA – the DNA in the genes of the mitochondria structures within cells – to paint [...]

Death Cluster

Talk of the Mothman or Mokele-Mbembe curses aside, I find myself in the midst of some times that have me reeling and beyond my understanding. My stepsister Shelley Atkins, 57, who was diagnosed with bone cancer less than two weeks ago, died around 7:30 pm, last night, June 9, 2008, in southern California. Shelley was also within my kinship tree as a cousin. (My mother’s second husband was my mother’s first cousin’s widower husband, and thus the children who were my mother’s second cousins then became her stepchildren – and by extension, my stepsiblings.) Shelley’s death follows my mother’s sudden [...]

Cryptid Long-Tailed Wildcats

The “Long-Tailed Wildcat” trapped and killed on January 16, 1922, in the Tinicum Swamp, Pennsylvania. Archival photograph, Henry W. Shoemaker, via Chad Arment. Perhaps it would be good to take a bit of a look at the reports of long-tailed spotted and striped small mystery and not-so-mysterious cats, in light of yesterday’s mention of “Long-Tailed Bobcats.” The bobcat pictured above has a short tail, but the photo shows how an allusion is created by the image of the tail merging with a back leg. Puma, young. Are there any jaguarundis (Puma yaguarondi) in the mix? Cryptozoologist Chad Arment has reminded [...]

Call For Cryptozoology Papers

The Association Belge d’Etude et de Protection des Animaux Rares (ABEPAR) asbl have organized its 8th Symposium at Engreux, to be held in The Ardenne, south of Belgium, on Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th September 2008. The thema is “Mysterious Animals from Waters and Woods.” They have opened, for consideration, a call for papers of fifty-minute long presentations (maximum lecture + questions/answers) in English, but best in French if possible. (They will not be paying for your travel expenses, even for accepted speakers. You must find your way to Belgium. I would love to give a formal analysis of Bigfoot [...]