Breaking News

Earliest Dino-Era Primate Discovered

Composite (left) and reconstructed (right) skeletons of Dryomomys szalayi, the oldest known ancestor of primates. (Credit: Bloch, et al./ PNAS) In the way of new fossil news, comes a press release from Yale, via Science Daily, discussing the origins of primates in Wyoming during the age of the dinosaurs. Well, that’s not exactly what it says, but I am merely trying to prepare you for how the media might characterize this paleontological discovery. What’s more important, perhaps, is the realization that the relationships within primates is being rewritten with every new discovery. So, for example, the new hominoid fossils that [...]

Peter Tompkins Dies

Hot on the heels of the death of superspy E. Howard Hunt (whose first wife had a magical middle name, Wetzel), now comes word of the passing of a Fortean writer of some note who also was a spy.

“Living Fossil” Shark Captured

It is no an unknown cryptid discovered or a new species, but like the underwater footage of the giant squid which rocked the media, there is new images of a very rare deep sea shark being discussed widely today. The remarkable-looking frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus) are a bit camera shy because they live so very deep, oh, at about 1800 to 3000 feet. Intriguingly, this might be the source of sea serpent sightings, during those infrequent times it has surfaced (but please note it swims – like all sharks – from side to side, not up and down like sea [...]

Where’s Wallie?

“Residents report wallaby on the loose in eastern Pa. town”, according to the Centre Daily Times, published in Centre County, Pennsylvania. In Fleetwood, Pennsylvania, the locals are asking “Where’s the wallaby?” That’s what officials at the Berks County Humane Society are wondering after residents began seeing a foreign creature hopping around town. The accounts came in on Monday, January 22, 2007. The agency received its first report of a wallaby sighting on Monday from a man who had seen the animal in his backyard over the weekend. No one has come forward missing a pet and 20 miles away, at [...]

Cryptomundo 2.0 Is Up

The new site is up. Anyone have any general feedback as well as any suggested specific enhancements that you would like to see in the near future? I don’t know if it is just my computer, but I cannot see the individual headers for my blog “CryptoZoo News” or Craig’s “Bigfoot Report” any longer. How does it look to you folks?

Coelacanth Quickies: Hofmeyr and Mount Karthala

Coelacanth tidbits have been surfacing and leaping up into my awareness over the last few days. I’ve fished them out of my short term catches and netted them anew here for you. 1) A highly debated bit of hominid fossil news these days is focussing on the Hofmeyr skull. The skull, found 55 years ago in a river bed near Hofmeyr in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, has resurfaced because of a new analysis of the contents of the inside of the skull. This new study has shown that the Hofmeyr skull is a lot older than people thought. [...]

What Is A New Species?

This is the latest new mammal discovered in Europe, Mus cypriacus or the Cypriot mouse, which was described last year in the journal Zootaxa. How does one determine that a new species has been discovered? How is it that one location has one species of salamander and thirty years later there are said to be many new species in that area? From where do all the new species come? The Naung Mung Scimitar-Babbler (Jabouilleia naungmungensis) was discovered in the pre-montane rainforests of northern Myanmar (Burma) in 2005. Their discovery, however, was not announced until 2006. It is a unique new [...]

Nature Will Find A Way

"The effort to eradicate pythons in the Everglades resulted in 170 being removed last year, up from 95 in 2005, national park spokeswoman Linda Friar said." – Naples Daily News Naples reporter Jeremy Cox, on Saturday, January 20, 2007, details (in part below) the real story about giant snakes being found in Florida: Deborah Jansen plopped the white plastic trash bag onto the grass and reached inside to reveal its contents: a Burmese python, flattened the night before along U.S. 41 East. Blood dripped from the snake’s mouth as Jansen, a wildlife biologist, uncoiled the snake to its full length [...]