u/lprattcryptozoology

Today's a damn good day for cryptozoology.

Kulls - What Would Sasquatch Do?

Davies - Extreme Expeditions

Tucker - Terror Of The Tokoloshe

Pfaller - Bigfoot Sasquatch Resurgence Of Native American Indian Legends

Downes -Monster Hunter

Franzoni - In the Spirit of Seatco

CFZ Yearbooks 1996-2003

CFZ Yearbook 2007

Three weeks ago, on April 23rd, Nanaimoteuthis haggarti entered the headlines.  Cryptozoological comparisons were immediate - the editor’s summary for the paper opened by comparing it to the “Kraken, the giant cephalopod of legend”, and within hours comments and posts across major paleontological and cryptozoological subreddits speculated on a link between the two, even despite the editor’s note that Nanaimoteuthis “lived far too early to have been the source of the legend”. I’ve provided three recent posts as examples, two from cryptozoological subreddits and one using the “Cretaceous kraken” moniker. Evidently, the Prehistoric Survivor Paradigm (PSP) is alive and well…

The PSP describes the tendency of cryptozoological enthusiasts to assert that extinct groups or species are behind many cryptozoological anecdotes, even despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary in essentially every case. In some cases, these prehistoric survivors supposedly remain unchanged from what is represented in the fossil record, while in others they are highly derived members of otherwise extinct groups, complete with a multitude of novel anatomical features.

Fossils, in the eyes of the general public (and most cryptozoological enthusiasts), do little more than attest to the prior presence of now-extinct animals. People are often exposed to fossils or reconstructions entirely devoid of the context of their creation and reconstruction. Insight into said animal’s anatomy, ecology, and evolutionary history are ultimately up to interpretation and inference, tenuous at best and prone to being entirely rewritten - this perspective is best demonstrated by the “new spinosaurus update/spinosaurus nerf” meme, where the slate is constantly wiped with each additional discovery. This uncertainty expresses itself through viral memes such as the penguin sauropod and giant bird t-rex, the discourse around these analogies boiling down to “this is just as likely as other reconstructions”. Oftentimes, directly or indirectly, these analogies are packed with anti-scientific sentiments that latch onto the general conscious, keeping the cycle going. These prehistoric animals become less like animals and instead become amorphous monsters, subjects to be interpreted to suit the needs of the interpreter. Within cryptozoology, these fossils offer something else useful - materiality. Cryptids are uncertain by definition, but fossils irrefutably exist, and therefore can justify even the most outrageous speculations. This space of minimal fact, heavy analogy, and plenty of room for interpretation allows for plausible malleability, a concept I've mentioned previously.

Unfortunately, like many other mainstream cryptozoological arguments, there is little merit to the PSP. The fossil record is more than adequate to infer what groups of animals were present in a given time/place, especially in regards to megafauna like dinosaurs and marine reptiles, and often-cited prehistoric survivors are not reliable proxies for late survival. Most importantly, these hypotheses rely on general audience depictions of extinct animals found in encyclopedias or online, which have a long history of being plagiarized, generalized, amalgamated, or resuscitated, making them grossly unreliable and often outdated.

Nanaimoteuthis is a perfect example of this reliance on the unreliable. Nanaimoteuthis’ standing as a giant cephalopod is dubious - the species used as proxies for reconstructing N. haggarti are distantly related and ecologically dissimilar, making them inappropriate and unrealistic for rigorous size estimation. Furthermore, some authors of the paper seem to be obsessed with the idea of discovering “the largest cephalopod”, publishing other studies with dubious estimates of supposedly supergiant beaks. It’s bad science at best, but these perspectives are absent from the press coverage, social media posts, and shortform content covering the discovery, because the people involved aren’t cephalopod experts with the necessary information to be skeptical. Instead, it’s easier to see the paleoart and connect the dots of “we have an extinct giant octopus, we have an alleged extant giant octopus, they must be related”. It needs to be stressed that, as stated in the editor’s summary, there is no good reason to think Nanaimoteuthis has anything to do with modern cephalopod cryptid reports - but this disclaimer will likely stop very few. The PSP will persist…

As an additional note, I’d like to discuss a trend I’ve seen become progressively more common in recent years regarding the PSP. Online paleontological spaces relish in the little-known, many times signaling that an individual knows more than the others around them. I liken it to creature-catching video games (e.g. Pokemon, Monster Hunter, ARK), where a large portion of the discourse is based on showing off the rare specimen you’ve caught after a long grind; in paleontology’s case being the rare knowledge you’ve unearthed after researching. Due to an overlap in members, and especially since the pandemic (though an upwards increase has been observable since the proliferation of the internet), this reliance on the obscure has encroached upon cryptozoological spaces. By proxy of being obscure, these extinct animals are poorly understood and therefore able to be even further extrapolated and (mis)interpreted to fit any outlandish hypothesis. Dogman has become an amphicyonid, the Burrunjor has become Australovenator, the con-rit has become a radiodont, and of course now Nanaimoteuthis has become the kraken or lusca.

It’s interesting to see that almost every post discussing Nanaimoteuthis has used paleoart by HodariNundu rather than the graphs provided in the paper. Hodari is certainly the most popular artist around who abuses the obscure, offering obscene depictions based on the scrappiest of evidence. A trackway becomes a three-foot hellgrammite, a scrap of bone becomes a giant owl hunted to extinction by Indigenous Americans, and the Cretaceous Kraken eats a t-rex for some reason. Hodari does not intend them as factual, life-like reconstructions of these extinct species, but that intent is lost unless you plaster a disclaimer over the artwork itself - the speculations are stripped from their context just as fossils used for inspiration are stripped from their own.

I find it likely that cryptozoology will continue this trend and progressively cite more obscure discoveries to justify cryptids and perpetuate belief in them, especially as more are thoroughly investigated and “killed off” (the last two decades have seen the “death” of Nessie and Bigfoot, among others). Maybe we’ll see Hupehsuchus, Tiarajudens, or Pelagornis become cryptozoological household names like Gigantopithecus, Tanystropheus, and Megalonyx before them. 

Moving a mile a minute, have had around 200 new contributions to the CDP Library over the last two weeks. Have started writing and revamping some essays as well...

Everything from the later half of April has been compiled here

All articles from volumes 1-12 from the ISC Journal Cryptozoology have been split into individual PDFS here. Working on comment & response, and book reviews currently. Still working on getting volume 13 scanned.

Have also started splitting other periodicals, starting with The Cryptozoology Review

All issues of Gazette De La Bête, a French-language annual magazine for the Beast of Gevaudan have been compiled here (thanks u/Nublar1993)

Got three new books:

Sharon Eby's "Bigfoot Beyond Belief"

Terrance James' "Sasquatch Discovered - The Biography Of John Bindernagel"

B.J. Hollars' "In Defense Of Monsters"

and have uploaded some cryptozoology-themed mockumentaries as well:

Bigfoot Captured (History Channel); features Jeff Meldrum 3-D printing a Bigfoot skeleton

I Was Bitten: The Walker County Incident (Animal Planet)

Several different versions/dubs of Mermaids: The Body Found and Mermaids: The New Evidence (Animal Planet)

More to come in the future, goal is to not have this be just the Digitization Project updates sub. Of course huge thanks to Rich, Paisano, CryptoArchive, Tyler Greenfield and everybody else who has helped, contributed, gotten access to articles for me, and so on!

Bottom shelf (image 2) will be scanned in due time. Coleman's mermaid book is en route.

https://archive.org/details/heuvelmans-tras-la-pista

Just uploaded to Internet Archive the volumes of this extremely rare Spanish translation of On the track of Unknown animals by Heuvelmans.

As I said in my previous post, this edition from 1958 has very good an introduction written by Heuvelmans instead of Gerald Durrell. Also the chapter "There are lost worlds everywhere" has some paragraphs that were removed in the English translation, including a bit of Heuvelmans' opinion about UFOs. Personally, the covers are gorgeous.

If you have any rare Cryptozoological literature that is not online please consider digitizing it in the future, it doesn't matter the language.

Cryptozoological digitization project

Over the last several months I've been slowly organizing and pruning my personal cryptozoological file collection, which originally consisted of well over 2,000 files spread across multiple devices, drives, and Discord servers. The number of files has waxed and waned with new additions, now totaling just shy of 1400 (excluding magazines and journals). I'm in the process of uploading what I can to Internet Archive, linked below. This library is, of course, not just cryptozoological but contains a lot of anthropological literature as well, I hope to have it better organized in the future.

Uploads 1 and 2 are "papers" (mostly papers from peer-reviewed academic journals, though a few are from magazines and other not-so-academic sources). These are built primarily off of The Cryptozoological Reference Library, with many additions, most of which are not specifically cryptozoological.

3 was books, but that got flagged. Unsure exactly why just yet (though I have my suspicions) - am going to hold off on these for just now, but can provide a list if anybody is looking for a specific book. Until then this remains the primary compilation of cryptozoological books.

4 is the one I'm still actively working on, being non-English materials. Hoping to get as many of these translated as possible down the line.

5 is miscellany from periodicals - previously unavailable issues of Fortean Times and such. My uploads of Fortean Times 1-30 and 270-468 can be found here and here. Working to fill the gap of 31-269, if anybody can contribute please reach out!

6 is a collection of things that didn't fit the other categories. There's pdf copies of blogposts, college theses, various essays, and other such things. I'm also still contributing files to this one actively.

NOTE - in some collections (1 and 2 particularly) there is also a .zip file. This includes .pdfs which Internet Archive could not process for one reason or another. Can offer file lists and directly send those to folks if interested.

https://archive.org/details/cdp-bckup-1
https://archive.org/details/cdp-bckup-2
https://archive.org/details/cdp-bckup-4
https://archive.org/details/cdp-bckup-5/
https://archive.org/details/cdp-bckup-6/

If any of these go down, if there are any broken/corrupt files, any duplicates, or any other problems please reach out immediately! Enjoy!

The Cryptozoology Digitization Project is still alive and well. u/Richtherium scraped together the majority of the pages for this book and the wonderful CryptoArchive scanned the last pages we needed! Huge deal because this is a very thorough academic book containing relevant commentary on cryptozoology as a whole. Enjoy!

This weekend, a channel named Thorn’s Jungle released this video, discussing how cryptozoology needs a “reset” - a change in form and focus from both casual enthusiasts and the body of authors, investigators, and properly qualified cryptozoologists. I’m glad to see conversations of this sort happening in the casual sphere, as it’s something academics and the more academic enthusiasts among us have been saying for some time.

I know very little about Adam Thorn’s cryptozoological stuff other than the fact that he seems to be quite zoologically-literalist, especially in regards to wildmen - a stance which, if anything, is contradictory to some of the points he makes. I think this is an interesting dichotomy and therefore a good jumping-off point to discuss the idea of a “cryptozoological reset” here, especially since I haven’t seen the video posted much elsewhere.

Adam’s points are as follows:

- Cryptozoology is due for a “big change” because it has stagnated, even despite a rise in popularity and the development of methodologies and technologies which should, in theory, be leading to the discovery of cryptids. Instead of bodies and academic descriptions, we just have tracks and testimonies. 

- There is a focus on megafaunal cryptids (e.g. Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster) and complete absence of time spent looking for microfaunal cryptids (i.e. lizards, bugs, birds, fish, rodents), and as a result few cryptozoologists have ever actually discovered a cryptid (note - Thorn asserts that “no” cryptozoologist has ever discovered a cryptid, but there are several examples to the contrary. Marc Van Roosmalen is the clearest example). 

- Fraud, fabrications, and goalpost shifting are common within the circles focusing on these megafaunal cryptids. We get claims of “gift-giving Bigfoot” but never samples or photographs of them, and instead an explanation that “Bigfoot is interdimensional” to explain away the lack of proof. This attitude scares away academics. 

- Cryptozoology is generally a community engaged in fantasy and seeking mystery - the closer to “real” or “solved” a subject gets within cryptozoology, the less interest it receives. In some cases it’s like LARPing, which of course is a far cry from the zoological-focus of the subject. This is permitted by the lack of hard, provable conclusions in some cases.

- We should “reset” and start from square one, trying to prove or disprove whether or not these are animals first and foremost, and we should go about this inquiry academically. We may actually find something this go around…

I’ve sat for the past few days trying to articulate my problems with these points, and have yet to do so in a satisfactory way - I hope to produce a full overview in the future. To summarize, though:

- Cryptozoology is not a discipline but a cluster of subcultures. These subcultures focus primarily on the most accessible “cryptids” - the ones in their own backyards. The community can regularly contribute to the lore, something they can’t do for the cryptids of the Congo, Amazon, or far off islands. These cryptids - Bigfoot, lake monsters, extant Thylacines - are all ultimately “dead ends”, they’re not zoological animals awaiting (re)discovery, so naturally discourse is going to stagnate.

- These communities aren’t ever realistically going to change their perspectives, they will rationalize further and further (e.g. woo Bigfoot) or die off slowly (e.g. Nessie truthers). Rather than reigning them in, cryptozoology needs to focus on building its academic bases back up. On both an amateur and academic level, do interesting things with cryptozoological data - conduct ethnographies, do historical research, try to figure out how evidence was hoaxed, conduct studies of cryptozoological “memes” (like paleoart memes). Us, as an amateur community, can do actual work and contribute to the discipline, and can get academics interested in this unorthodox data.

- To do this, however, we need to shed out zoological-literalist tendencies and essentially start from square one. We need people invested in ethnozoological, anthropological, and sociological approaches first and foremost, rather than zoological. We need to be dealing with anecdotes at their source and building up a history of our unknown animals long before determining identity, if identity is being determined at all. We need more Meurger, more Forth, more Naish, more Regal, more Shine, more Paxton, more Hill, more Lewis & Bartlett - a cryptozoological “reset” requires a complete rewrite.

In the absence of a detailed opinion/rebuttal, I’d like to use this as a discussion post - what are your opinions on a cryptozoological reset?

Phenomenal video which uses Zana as a jumping off point for a nice, thorough history of Africans across the former Soviet Union, Some nice discussion on early cryptozoology included.

As part of the cryptozoological digitization project, Richard Muirhead was kind enough to provide back issues of Flying Snake magazine. I've uploaded the first 10 volumes, spanning issues 1-29. Currently working on an organized index of articles, there's a lot of interesting content to delve into. Enjoy!

Volume 11 is still ongoing, issues 30 and 31 have been published, and 32 is due around fall this year. I'm going to hold off on uploading Volume 11 until Volume 12 comes out, but issues 30 and 31 can be purchased from Richard (PayPal address richardmuirhead66@outlook.com) for £3.99 or $5.32 per issue. More information can be found at https://www.cosmicpolymath.com/. Links to purchase the first omnibus of Flying Snake (issues 1-5) can be found here - https://cfz.org.uk/book/flying-snake-volume-one-1/ - I just picked this up, it's a nice book.