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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Monday, July 15, 2013

NEW GUINEA THYLACINES


A specimen of the Tasmanian tiger in the Natural History Museum at Oslo, Norway. Photo by: L. Shyamal.I posted this a while back, but apparently I screwed up the link, so here it is again.


Many people still believe the Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) survives in the wilds of Tasmania, even though the species was declared extinct over eighty years ago. Sightings and reports of the elusive carnivorous marsupial, which was the top predator on the island, pop-up almost as frequently as those of Bigfoot in North America, but to date no definitive evidence has emerged of its survival. Yet, a noted cryptozoologist (one who searches for hidden animals), Dr. Karl Shuker,wrote recentlythat tiger hunters should perhaps turn their attention to a different island: New Guinea.

The Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine, once populated much of Tasmanian and mainland Australia—where it is also still searched for—but few know that the animal was present on New Guinea as well. Its prehistoric presence there first came to light in 1960 when archeologists discovered the lower jaw of a Tasmanian tiger.

"Further confirmed fossil remains, dating at over 2 million years old, have subsequently been found on New Guinea; and also in later years, unconfirmed sightings of thylacine-like beasts have been reported from both Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Irian Jaya (the western, Indonesian half of New Guinea)," Shuker told mongabay.com.

A specimen of the Tasmanian tiger in the Natural History Museum at Oslo, Norway. Photo by: L. Shyamal.
A specimen of the Tasmanian tiger in the Natural History Museum at Oslo, Norway. Photo by: L. Shyamal.

While Tasmanian tigers are believed to have died out in New Guinea at the end of the Pleistocene, Shuker believes there's a chance a population still survives on the mountainous island, which contains some of the world's least-explored terrestrial habitats.

"New Guinea, especially Irian Jaya, is far less well-explored than either Tasmania or mainland Australia, as confirmed for instance by recent expeditions to Irian Jaya's Foja Mountains, where several new and potentially new species were discovered, including a giant rat, a tiny wallaby, and a new honeyeater," Shuker says. "Consequently, there is a much greater chance of zoological novelties turning up here than elsewhere within the thylacine's former distribution range, and one such novelty may be the thylacine itself."

Read on...

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