Conspiracies

Atlas Bear Claims

The extinct Atlas bear (Ursus crowtheri), above, continues to live on in dispute, even here on the pages of Cryptomundo. Today, round two in the battle between a German commentator and a French respondent. Michel Raynal is one of the foremost cryptozoologists in Europe, the webmaster of Virtual Institute of Cryptozoology, the first French site devoted to cryptozoological research. Raynal, pictured above, passes along some comments, below, in response to German comment maker Sordes’s claims on the Atlas bear published at Cryptomundo, which can be found more completely here: Sordes’s comments: “Around 1900 (or a bit later) bones of this [...]

When Cryptozoologists Die

Bill Rebsamen’s tribute to Scott Norman, who passed away suddenly earlier in 2008. This may be a difficult essay for you to read, but this is a subject we all have ignored for a long time. There is a darker side that occurs after the obituaries and remembrances are written. What happens after the tributes are published? Why have we avoided the obvious, and watched legacies vanish? There are some things I’ve got to say. We shall pick up an existence by its frogs. Wise men have tried other ways. They have tried to understand our state of being, by [...]

Sea Monster Week

Darren Naish, over at Tetrapod Zoology, just rolled through five days, last week, of sea monster photographs and remarks about the mostly fake, false, or misleading images. Let’s take a look. First up was the March 1965 photograph (below) from Robert Le Serrec of a huge, tadpole-like creature encountered in Stonehaven Bay, Hook Island, Queensland, Australia. The case has been rather universally labeled a hoax. I mentioned in my field guide that Interpol was even after the guy. Naish does gather together all the “other photos” linked with this episode, and that’s a rather interesting angle ignored by most. Naish [...]