John Conway - Cryptozoologicon: Volume I

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About the Authors

John Conway

Artist

John Conway is a palaeontological and fine artist, whose work has been used by National Geographic, Discovery Channel and the American Museum of Natural History, among others. His work has recently appeared in Dinosaur Art: the World's Greatest Paleoart and All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals .

Website: johnconway.co
Twitter: @nyctopterus
Facebook: facebook.com/nyctopterus

C.M. Kosemen

Artist & Author

C. M. Kosemen holds a Media and Communications Masters' degree from Goldsmiths College, and has worked as an editor in Benetton Company's Colors magazine. He has had several exhibitons of his evolution-themed fine art at galleries and science festivals internationally. Kosemen's areas of specialization are speculative & real zoology, history and unusual things in general. His previous work includes Snaiad , a self-initiated web project about life on an alien planet.

Website: www.cmkosemen.com
Facebook: facebook.com/memo.kosemen

Darren Naish

Author

Darren Naish is a palaeozoologist and science writer based at the University of Southampton (UK) who mostly work on dinosaurs, pterosaurs and Mesozoic marine reptiles. He co-described the early tyrannosaur Eotyrannus , the new pterosaurs Vectidraco and Eurazhdarcho , and the Cretaceous ichthyosaurs Acamptonectes and Malawania . He is interested in all tetrapods and writes widely about amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals for his world-famous blog, Tetrapod Zoology (currently hosted at Scientific American). His several previous books include Walking With Dinosaurs: The Evidence (with David M. Martill), The Great Dinosaur Discoveries , and Tetrapod Zoology: Book One . He has a long-standing interest in cryptozoology and has published extensively on this subject.

Website: blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/
Twitter: @TetZoo

Cryptozoologicon

The Biology, Evolution and Mythology of Hidden Animals

Volume I

By John Conway , C. M. Kosemen and Darren Naish

Introduction

The term 'cryptozoology' - originally coined in the 1950s and now considered fairly mainstream - is most usually associated with spectacular monsters from remote places, like the Yeti, Bigfoot and the gigantic horse-headed sea-serpents of lore. Despite this association with monsters, cryptozoology has most clearly been enunciated as the study of any animal known from anecdotal data: that is, from sightings, stories or published accounts, but unknown (as yet) from specimens that have been retained and are available for study. Defined as such, cryptozoology is not necessarily 'monster hunting', but the study of any creature known from anecdote. Contrary to stereotype, the targets of cryptozoology aren't all 'monsters', since cryptozoologists routinely investigate small mystery birds (Raynal 2006), dull, marmot-like mammals and small cats (Heuvelmans 1986), small lizard-like reptiles (Shuker 1997a), and even small mystery fish (Shuker 1996) and insects (Raynal 1996).

In an extensive but often arcane literature, cryptozoologists have collected, collated and analysed the reports, legends and stories that seemingly describe mystery creatures or 'cryptids' before going on to determine what sort of animals they might be, how they might have evolved, and how they might fit into their local ecosystem. The study of cryptids can be said to extend back into antiquity. However, cryptozoology as we know it today owes its popularisation to several prolific authors, all of whom essentially agree that eyewitness reports of mystery creatures can be interpreted as reliable descriptions of encounters with unknown species. These people have often argued that the inventory of animal species currently accepted by science is much incomplete, and fundamentally and frustratingly restrained by the arrogance, resistance and cynicism of mainstream scientists.

In the wake of Bernard Heuvelmans

We mostly owe this view of a cryptid-filled world to Belgian zoologist and author Bernard Heuvelmans (1916-2001), widely regarded as the 'Father of Cryptozoology'. Heuvelmans was a trained zoologist whose PhD work focused on aardvark dentition. He published a single, uninfluential paper on that subject (Heuvelmans 1939) and, between 1941 and 1943, five additional papers on sirenian dentition. After the early 1940s, however, he did not contribute to the 'mainstream' technical zoological literature, but became dedicated to cryptozoology. In his 1958 book On the Track of Unknown Animals (originally published in 1955 as Sur la Piste des Btes Ignores ) and its 1968 follow-up In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents (also translated and modified from a French language predecessor), Heuvelmans wrote at length about the Yeti, Orang Pendek, New Zealand's otter-like Waitoreke, Australia's Queensland tiger, and about possible dinosaurs and pterosaurs in the Congo, gargantuan marine eels, weird long-necked seals, and Basilosaurus -like whales and Mesozoic-style marine reptiles that had perhaps survived to the modern day. Heuvelmans inspired many other researchers by showing that detailed analyses of cryptid reports, when combined with zoological and ethnological expertise, could allow the scholarly cryptozoologist to theorise to life the existence of all manner of unknown creatures.

Heuvelmans wrote many other books on cryptids (many still not translated into English) as well as several significant and often bold technical articles on cryptozoology and specific cryptids (Heuvelmans 1969, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1990).

Heuvelmans was heavily inspired by, and frequently gave credit to, Ivan T. Sanderson (1911-1973). Thanks to TV and radio shows, and numerous popular books, Scottish-born Sanderson became an American celebrity known for his immense knowledge of animals and their world. He was also deeply interested in UFOs, the paranormal, and cryptids, and wrote several books on these subjects. Like Heuvelmans, his role as a populariser cannot be underestimated and many ideas that persist today - about Yetis, sea monsters and the like - largely originated with him.

Viewed critically, Sanderson's writings often contain bizarre claims, he sometimes boldly pronounced things that were flat-out wrong, and he was prepared to accept ideas and accounts that probably warranted more scepticism. Like Heuvelmans, he was convinced of the veracity of the Minnesota Iceman (a hominid corpse, frozen in ice, and displayed as a carnival sideshow) and he was fooled into claiming that gigantic penguins (4.5m tall) were visiting the Florida coastline after a series of hoaxed tracks were discovered. Actually, Sanderson even claimed a sighting of one of the giant penguins himself, one of many cases in which he reportedly witnessed cryptids first-hand.

There is no doubt that both Heuvelmans and Sanderson could be regarded as walking encyclopedias of zoological information, and as important popularisers of exotic zoology. From a scientifically-minded viewpoint, however, it is obvious and inescapable that both were essentially outside the sphere of scientific research, both were predominantly involved in popularisation more than technical work, and both were strongly attached to ideas that were and are highly problematic (not because they were or are strange, but because they were or are poorly supported and difficult to accept).