Extinct

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

New Fossil Find: Yanoconodon

What was drinking from that creek bed in the neighborhood? This artist’s representation shows Yanoconodon allini, a 125-million-year-old mammal fossil found in China. The five inch long mammal is important for its significance in the origins of the inner ear. (Credit: Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation) For more, see: Paleontologists Discover New Mammal From Mesozoic Era. This fossil’s importance to cryptozoology is nil, but it does demonstrate the Chinese are hard at work discovering more fossils. Let’s hope they come up with a complete fossil subcranial skeleton of Gigantopithecus soon!

Honshu Wolf Survival?

The world’s smallest variety of wolf, the Japanese wolf, also called the Honshu Wolf (Canis lupus hodophilax), supposedly became extinct in 1905 in Nara prefecture. But did some survive beyond that date? And was there physical proof of this, in 1910 in Fukui prefecture? Sightings of the Japanese wolf persist to the present. A new debate is occurring currently in Japan that the extinction date may have been incorrect, almost immediately. Intriguingly, finding a taxidermy example of the Honshu Wolf presently is quite difficult. Only five mounted specimens are known worldwide, three in Japan, one in the Netherlands (which is [...]

Bird Extinct 139 Years Rediscovered

This old public domain painting is of Acrocephalus palustris, a species related to Acrocephalus orinus just rediscovered. A bird presumed to have been extinct for well over 100 years has been rediscovered in a pristine coastal wetland in Petchaburi, on the Gulf of Thailand. The large-billed reed warbler (Acrocephalus orinus) had not been seen since 1867, when a single bird of the species was reported in the northwest of India. – Bangkok Post, March 7, 2007. We collected two feathers from the bird for DNA tests and the result showed that it perfectly matched the DNA of the 139-year-old specimen [...]