Forensic Science

Attempt to Photo WV “African Lion”

Animal control personnel have set up cameras in the area where the African Lion is reported to be roaming in West Virginia. They are using both game cameras as well as Motion-sensitive video cameras owned by the state Department of Environmental Protection and used to catch litterbugs. Officials want to confirm that they are dealing with a African Lion before proceeding with a plan to trap the lion in a bear trap used to capture troublesome bears.“Hopefully the Lion Is Not Camera Shy,” Moose Droppings, October 29, 2007. And Lewisburg, W.Va. (AP) – Using a video camera and raw chicken, [...]

Identikit Used In Cryptozoology Discoveries

Drawings of the yellow-tailed woolly monkey (Oreonax flavicauda) by artist Stephen Nash were used in Peru to rediscover the primate. The use of identikit illustrations in support of the cryptozoology method is demonstrated often. The objective is to discovery what is already ethnoknown, in terms of local wildlife. Drawings from scratch, under the direction of locals, are a source of primary information. But oftentimes, identikit materials are used in the field for gathering and fine-tuning visual information. Sometimes, if available, a photograph shown to local residents and indigenous peoples is successful in gathering more data on new animals. This is [...]

Maneless Maneaters May Leave USA

During the fall, coming in and out of the news, has been the demand from Kenya that Chicago’s Field Museum return the remains of two lions that reportedly killed about 135 Indian railworkers (but probably actually only about 25) in the 1890s, before being shot by a famed British railway engineer. These lions are the infamous maneaters of Tsavo. Railway engineer Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson – whose adventures formed the basis of the Oscar-winning 1996 movie The Ghost and the Darkness, starring Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer, shot the strange cats in December 1898. Twenty-six years later Patterson sold the [...]

Breaking News: Platypus – 120 M Yrs Old Living Fossil

When the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) was first discovered by Europeans in 1798, no one believed it could be real. British scientists were at first convinced it must be a hoax. George Shaw, who produced the first description of the animal in 1799 in the Naturalist’s Miscellany, originally had his doubts about it being a real animal. Shaw cut up the dried skin to look for stitches. Robert Knox believed it may have been produced by some Oriental taxidermist by sewing a duck’s beak onto the body of a beaver-like animal. How would have zoology and cryptozoology dealt with such an [...]

Cow-Eating Tree Video

Still more on the “India’s Cow-Eating Trees”. A fascinating video report from tvdaijiworld India has been broadcast about the cow-eating tree, the eyewitness villagers, and the cow. Here is the footage, hosted by Gloria Rodrigues: ++++++ Update: David Pescovitz at Boing Boing did a good job of capturing a couple frames from the video, here.

More On Man-Eating Plants

You saw the posting here entitled “India’s Cow-Eating Trees”, and then might have seen it was picked up by Boing Boing. As David Pescovitz wrote, “Loren Coleman detours into ‘cryptobotany.’” Ah, the path less traveled. Map: The entire distribution range of the Venus Flytrap. Did they come down in a meteorite impact? Since then, there’s been several blogs around the internet snapping at a chance to mention man-eating trees. Now the news articles are appearing. One of the most detailed appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, which tips its cap to cryptozoologists, and points Bay Area residents in the direction [...]

Flaming Neandertals and Future Humans

It’s been quite a week in fossil hominid news. Gives you some pause about what might be around the corner, so to speak. Neandertals are now said to have been freckled and flame-haired, but then red-haired Neandertals were theorized earlier in Stan Gooch’s The Neanderthal Question (1977). Some of Gooch’s material is seen as fringe, but insights like this have been remarkable. Years before Gooch, anthropologist Carleton Coon (The Origin of the Races, 1962, and in his lectures) had been saying related things but no one listened. Instead, critics indicated in the 1970s he was a racist for some of [...]