Top Cryptozoology Stories of 2004

The Top Cryptozoology Stories of 2004. By Loren Coleman, author of Bigfoot!

1. The Discovery of Homo floresiensis
   The story is as remarkable as the finding of the first coelacanth, the 65 million year extinct "living fossil" found off Africa in 1938. The biggest story in anthropology for 2004 may become the event of the decade within cryptozoology. The editor of Nature, Henry Gee, in an editorial entitled "Flores, God and Cryptozoology," wrote: "The discovery that Homo floresiensis survived until so very recently, in geological terms, makes it more likely that stories of other mythical, human-like creatures such as Yetis are founded on grains of truth....Now, cryptozoology, the study of such fabulous creatures, can come in from the cold."

See this site on evolution for some nice pictures of different fossil skulls.

Chupacabra Movie: Fiction.

It was just a matter of time. They've turned the real chupacabra into a Hollywood movie monster. Cool!

"CHUPACABRA: DARK SEAS (Sci Fi) - The original telefilm has been slated to premiere on Saturday, January 29 at 9:00/8:00c. Here's how the network's press materials describe the project: "A team of hunters captures a live Chupacabra, a monster said to prey on livestock and humans throughout Central America. Unfortunately, their attempt to smuggle it into the United States aboard a cruise ship goes fatally awry, and a squad of U.S. Navy SEALs is dispatched to terminate the creature before it turns all the hostage passengers into hors d'oeuvres. John Rhys-Davies (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Indiana Jones films, TV's Sliders), Dylan Neal (star of SCI FI Pictures' Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers) and Giancarlo Esposito (The Usual Suspects, the SCI FI Original Miniseries 5ive Days to Midnight, TV's Homicide: Life on the Street) star in this creepy man-vs.-monster adventure."

Chupacabra. A cover up?

A comment I think may be bogus: (woai.com) "The first round of DNA tests on the Elmendorf beast came back inconclusive because the animal had been dead for too long."

Okay, to test the Elmendorf beast, biologists dug up bone fragments. If being dead for a long time messes up DNA tests, how is it possible to test animal DNA from around the time of the supposed birth of Jesus Christ and the murder of Julius Caesar?

"The seven bone deposits of mules eaten and buried inside cleaning pots and storage jars by the Qumran community in the 1st century BCE will undergo DNA testing this week." - rnews

Chupacabra is not a coyote with mange.

I found this quote about mange interesting regarding the Elmendorf beast:

"Stacy spent twenty years working with a veterinarian and as a zookeeper for five years, so some of her expertise came in handy on this visit. She debunked the mange theory.

'This was not a secondary infection,' she pointed out as she examined the pictures. 'This was scaly skin. There was no secondary infection in this animal caused by mange.'

See our chupacabra article and our cryptozoology archives for more details.

Chupacabra found and killed.

Here are a few more close up pictures of the mouth of the Lufkin, Texas chupacabra. See our chupacabra article for more. You really can see a line of hair down this one's back in the last photo. Sad that they shot and killed it. Better to trap one so it could be examined alive.

Stacey Womack quoted on earthfiles says, "I had a man call me last night and he said he killed one several years ago that looked almost identical to it and he has some pictures of it and he wanted me to have them and I had a message on my machine just a few minutes ago that he has the pictures. He says he's seen them in groups of three."

Compare these 2004 photos to our 2001 description: "It was about four feet tall, standing erect on two legs. It was disproportionately muscular in its upper body. It had glowing red eyes, a little bit of a snout like a dog, it was hairy all over and it had long claws. It's legs bent backwards, like a goat's. " - Xenophilia.com, 9/8/2001. Also mentioned were long fangs and in our report, unlike others, there were no wings.

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Is the Chupacabra a hairless mutant coyote?

"Dr. James Wright of the Texas Department State Health Services Zoonosis Control Division in Tyler explained the grotesque features of the coyote.

"The animal was suffering from poor nutrition. It did not run off those nails like a healthy animal would. I've seen dogs with nails that long," said Wright, who added that the extraordinary overbite was probably the result of a genetic malformation.

The lack of hair on the animal's body has been repeatedly accredited to mange. Wright explained that mange is a condition caused by mites. ... "The real story here is how excited people got over a coyote with mange," said Dr. Wright. - countryworldnews

Dr.Wright, did you know there is more than one of these creatures? See our article. If you have more than one, the genetic malformation theory seems more unlikely. Anyway, here is a coyote with a really bad case of mange:

Compare to our chupacbra. The tail is thicker and longer, the lower jaw is shorter, and the teeth seem longer on the chupa. It also seems odd that there is so little hair compared to a coyote with mange. Could something in Texas be causing mutant coyotes with hair loss?

Another Chupacabra sighting in Texas?

This one is walking on four legs, but my eye-witness in California said it stood on the back two legs. The front legs do look shorter than the back here. I wonder if it can stand up like a kangaroo. Strange.

(woai) "Michael Rigsby from Nacogdoches sent News 4 WOAI these pictures, but he isn't sure what this animal is. It's tough to see through the fog, but the animal has a bushy tail. Rigsby tells News 4 the animal had canine-like features, but it doesn't look like a dog. Comparing the animal to the beast found in Elmendorf, the Elmendorf version was hairless. The animal Rigsby found was hairy. Another man in east Texas reported seeing a chupacabra-type animal near Lufkin a few weeks ago."

Chupacabra killed by rancher?

(woia | update) Chupacabra killed by rancher? "The animal has a blue-grey coloring, is almost hairless, has a short mane and large fangs." In Elmendorf, South Texas, more than thirty of rancher Devin McAnally's chickens were slaughtered in broad daylight until he shot this strange creature. The Communion Foundation will exhume McAnally's creature and send it out for DNA testing. "Amy Davis, News 4 WOAI

The mysterious creature killed in Elmendorf is creating curiosity among scientists all over the country. The rancher you saw first on WOAI is getting calls from as far away as Philadelphia. Researchers will now dig up the bizarre-looking beast in an attempt to identify what some are calling the famed Chupacabra.

The digging to collect the animal's remains begins Tuesday. It could take four to six weeks to get the DNA test results back from the lab."

See our own Chupacabra story with multiple eye-witness sightings in California. The California creature reportedly had a flat nose so it may be a different animal.

"John Gramieri, the Mammal Curator at the San Antonio Zoo, doesn't think it's the Chupacabra. It's definitely unique, but he thinks it's a mix between a dog and a coyote."

florida sunk ape photo added

Created an animated gif today from two bigfoot photos of the florida sunk ape and added them to my Bigfoot Article.

Bigfoot sighted.

( Associated Press) Bigfoot sighted. Two days ago, on June 11,

"Marion Sheldon and Gus Jules were traveling out of town along the Alaska Highway on an all-terrain vehicle between 1 and 2 a.m. when they passed what resembled a person standing on the side of the highway. ...

Thinking it was a person from their small community who might be in need of a ride, they turned around. As the two lifelong Teslin residents and members of the Teslin Tlingit Council approached to within 20 feet, they noticed the figure was covered in hair, but standing upright the entire time.

Though natural light was dusky, Jules saw what he believed to be flesh tones hidden beneath the mat of hair, he told Bakica. ... Jules is an experienced hunter. Jules described the figure as standing about 7 feet tall, but hunched over. They could see it was not a person.

As the two parties went their separate ways, the dark-haired figure crossed the highway in two or three steps. Teslin is about 90 miles southeast of Whitehorse. It would not be the first suspected Yukon sighting of the folklore beast.

In April 1991, three Pelly Crossing residents reported seeing a Sasquatch while driving between Pelly and Stewart Crossing. The creature fled back into the woods as the vehicle passed. The residents took a photo of what they claim were footprints measuring 15 inches long in the melting snow.

I don't quite understand what they did after getting 20 feet away. Did they stop, then reverse direction and drive off while watching in the rear view mirror? For the best bigfoot evidence and thousands of sightings, see our bigfoot article.

Strange new foxlike creature in North Carolina

(newsrecord) Published: Jun 3, 2004. Author: Mark Brumley. Strange creature stumps experts. This photo (left) of an animal about the size of a fox, but with short brown hair and a long cat-like tail, was taken by Bill and Gayle Kurdian's motion sensing camera in eastern Randolph County, North Carolina.

"In January, some people reported seeing an unidentifiable creature in southern Asheboro." The source is a legit paper, not a tabloid.

This looks somewhat like a tasmanian wolf. The tasmanian wolf -- also called a zebra dog, tasmanian tiger, or thylacine (photo right, video here) -- had smaller ears and stripes on its back. The now extinct thylacine was most closely related to kangaroos. It was a marsupial with a pouch for its young. The last one died in a zoo in 1936. Interestingly, there was an effort to clone the extinct Tasmanian Tiger to bring it back. I wonder how many large creature are still undiscovered. Bigfoot? Chupacabras?

Fish going about on land?

Can any modern day fish go about on land? Yes. "This photo, taken from the Maryland Department of National Resources (MDDNR) web site shows the air breathing, land walking snakehead fish. A man in Los Angeles was arrested for allegedly selling a live snakehead fish. (AFP/HO-MDDNR/File)"I like this next CNN quote because we humans eat a million animals per hour (more hippy stats here) and we have now depleted the oceans of fish with our voracious hunger and our advanced ecosystem destroying technology.

"State officials said the 19-inch fish, an Asian species that can wriggle on land for short distances and eats so many smaller fish it can destroy an ecosystem."

Hey, leave this thing alone long enough and it will evolve into ... us!

Most bizzare creatures you’ll never see

(uglyzoo) Are these photos proof of Russian military hybrid technology? No, just great fakes!

Vehicles: Hybrid Prius.

I heard a rumor that the top speed of the 2004 Toyota Prius (gas and electric hybrid) was 80 mph. This is not true. It can do over 100 mph without much trouble according to our sources. Here are some photos from the road (and one from a race track?) from a reporter who tested it for us.

The 2004 hybrid vehicle has plenty of power and it can go as fast as you like.

Passing people is no problem. Getting 60 miles per gallon of gas is also no problem. The Prius does have a slighly longer stopping distance than the 2003 Infinity G35 and it would probably not win a drag race head to head with one, but our driver who loves to drive fast had no problem with the power of this hybrid car.

The Prius is excellent, fun to drive and good for the environment.

Most people ask where you plug it in. You don't plug it in. You never charge it, you just fill it with gas. The brakes and the gas engine charge the big battery. There is also a small auxillary battery used to start the car.

There is a trick: you have to have your foot on the brake to start it. The car has an automatic transmission. When you get close to it with your electronic key, the door unlocks automatically. The best part is knowing that you are saving lots of money because you get up to three times as many miles from each gallon of gas compared to the others on the road. Since the world starting to run out of easily obtainable oil, this is a very smart and environmentally friendly car to own in the next few years as prices soar! Verdict: Get one!

A photo of a goblin

Here is a really freaky picture. Is it a Chupacabra? Is it an evil creature from the vile pits of Hell!?

Uh, no. It is a plaster goblin that was placed in a dark corner on the Cheddar Showcaves and Gorge in Somerset, England. "The REAL story behind it is that a man ("John," 33, Bournemouth UK) went to Saudi Arabia on a business trip. He met a man who said he had seen a flash of light in a dark cave and snapped a picture, and this is the picture that came out. John obtained a copy of the picture (the locals said it was a djinn, or evil spirit) and brought it back to England in search of a buyer. It turns out that the "djinn" is part of Cheddar Showcaves, a tourist attraction which contains an attraction called "Crystal Quest." Crystal Quest is a dark cave full of Tolkeinesque carvings, intermittently lit by strobe. Cheddar Gorge officials confirmed this and noted that many people had taken pictures of strange things in the cave, after seeing a flash of light and pointing their camera at it. You can still see this statue there. This picture was debunked in Fortean Times "Strange Days #1," 1996, pp.27-28, from which the above information is taken. " Of course, there may still be Chupacabras.

Bigfoot Skeletons?

There was a claim by "Pete Kantner" that Archaeologist Dr. Jan Margate discovered the first Bigfoot skeletons while searching for Indian relics east of Seneca in the Malheur National Forest. "This discovery of a gigantic burial mound in the Oregon wilderness has stunned scientists who say that the plot is littered with the bones of hundreds of Bigfoots - the most elusive creatures known to man!" You won't find this in our bigfoot article because the above came from the August 10, 1993, Weekly World News a tabloid that prints fun stories. Read more of it here. If it was legit, you'd see where the Dr. works, you'd be able to find some other story written by Pete Kantner (the supposed author of the article) and you'd be able to look up Dr. Jan Margate on google. There is no Margate in the registry of professional archaeologists. My quick research says the story may have been written by a writer named Chip Rowe. There is a Seneca OR and there is obsidian east of Seneca in the Malheur National Forest. There are Indian artifacts, including a 7,500+ year old obsidian tool workshop.

Vehicles: Electric cars

Here is a link to info on electric vehicles.