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 [...]
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 [...]
WV “African Lion” Updates
The fossil replica of the giant skull of Panthera atrox, the recently extinct American lion, the massive lion of the Pleistocene. It was probably maned. From Rancho La Brea Tar Pits. Photo: Baystatereplicas.com. On Friday, October 26, 2007, and the day before, the West Virginia Metro News, a radio service out of Charleston, broadcast followups to the recent reports of a “full-grown, male African lion.” Here are their two news items: Trout, W. Va. – Jim Shortridge has been hunting his entire life and says he knows what he saw. “A lot of people doesn’t believe it, but it doesn’t [...]
Soviet Hominologists Were Right: Siberian Neandertals
Palaeoarchaeological findings appear to be catching up to hominology, the segment of cryptozoology studying unknown hominoids. For some time, a few of us have studied various reports of what might be surviving Neandertals* in Siberia and China. Whether called Mecheny, Mirygdy, Chuchunaa, Mulen, or Wildmen, some Soviet Snowmen Commission scientists and a few Chinese in the last century theorized we might be dealing with relict populations of Neandertals. Especially intriguing are the Chuchunaa, the often clothed, eastern version of the Mirygdy, seen in Eastern Siberia. (Perhaps further research will also show the fossil Neandertals were a bit larger in their [...]
Sasquatch’s Sagittal Crests
I know I’ve gone over some of this before, but all this talk about the Patterson-Gimlim footage for the 40th anniversary seems to be stirring up a need to revisit it. It seems rather unbelievable to me that I’m hearing again that only “male gorillas have sagittal crests” and this is being used as a reason to discount the Patterson Bigfoot footage. Paranthropus, my fossil candidate choice for Bigfoot, had sagittal crests in both genders. Paranthropus sp. image courtesy of skullsunlimited.com I take the stance that Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Oh-Mah, whatever you wish to call the classic Neo-Giants of the Pacific [...]
Hobbit Wrists and Jurassic Feathers
A comparison of wrist bones like those found in the “hobbit” human (left) and those of a modern human suggest that the diminutive hominin is a unique species, scientists say. Image © Science It is one of those busy news days, especially in terms of fossil updates. The two big fossil discovery news items are primate and aves related, and of interest to Cryptomundo. One is the new Science report that a study of the wrist bones of Homo floresiensis confirms it is a new species, and not an abnormal human. The other finding is that there were feathers on [...]
New Fossil Great Ape Discovery
An ape possibly larger than any other from the Miocene but Gigantopithecus? The announcement of a new big ape, a breaking fossil find out of Turkey, is turning heads. Perhaps the day is growing closer for more finds of Gigantopithecus too? The new fossil great ape discovery appears to be a species of Ouranopithecus, and thus related to the above species, Ouranopithecus macedoniensis. A team from the departments of Anthropology at the University of Ankara, Ankara, Turkey, and the University of Yüzüncüyil, Department of Anthropology, The Faculty of Science and Letters, Van, Turkey has recovered a fossil ape (as a [...]
New Unknown Fossil Great Ape
To many, the reconstructions of Lucy (above) and other Australopithecus species appear to look rather apelike. However, until recently, fossil finds for the ancestors of the great apes have been lacking. That all seems to be changing. The nine fossil teeth (below) from Ethiopia are being announced in Nature, as gorilla-like and said to be from a previously unknown species of great ape. Here’s more from the BBC: The 10 million-year-old fossils belong to an animal that has been named Cororapithecus abyssinicus by the Ethiopian-Japanese team. This new species could be a direct ancestor of living African great apes, say [...]
Oldest Footprint
The photograph the ancient footprint has not been published, to the best of our knowledge. Egyptian archaeologists have found what they said could be the oldest human footprint in history in the country’s western desert, the Arab country’s antiquities’ chief said on Monday. “This could go back about two million years,” said Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. “It could be the most important discovery in Egypt,” he told Reuters. Archaeologists found the footprint, imprinted on mud and then hardened into rock, while exploring a prehistoric site in Siwa, a desert oasis. Scientists are [...]
We Are Not Alone
We are not alone. If there is any truth to the testimony of eyewitnesses worldwide, we appear to live amidst a variety of humanlike and apelike creatures whose existence has been largely ignored, forgotten, or denied, at least in recent history. Despite the crowding of the earth’s surface with our species, and the encroachment by Homo sapiens into the mountains, wildernesses, and wild places around the world, there is apparently ample room left over for our elusive cousins to hide. And they have done just that–for the most part. But as the reports of encounters accumulate, it has become increasingly [...]
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