Friday 28 January 2011

Local Council say Big Cat sighting is authentic.

28/01/2011 17:14
Ex-policeman in 'big cat' sighting
Council chiefs have hailed a big cat sighting as the best ever proof the so-called mythical beasts really exist.A former policeman based in west Wales spotted a "puma or panther-like animal" as recently as Wednesday.Michael Disney now works for Pembrokeshire County Council's Public Protection Division and his sighting is being treated as authentic.
The latest sighting comes days after the government environment watchdog for England dismissed the existence of big cats. Experts with Natural England said in a report that they were confident no breeding populations of big cats exist in Britain.Pembrokeshire Council begs to differ and is so convinced by Mr Disney that it is urging the public to report any sightings. It published extracts of the statement made by their man, which has been passed to the police.Mr Disney's encounter happened in broad daylight in countryside six miles north of Haverfordwest, near Treffgarne village. He was driving his council car on a single track road at 15mph when a large black "puma or panther" crossed five metres in front of him.He said: "I immediately stopped my vehicle and stared at this animal. It had a large cat-like head, muscular build and was approximately three feet tall."It was bigger and more muscular than a German shepherd dog. The coat was smooth and looked like it had brown spots on it. I had a clear, unobstructed view of the animal and the visibility was excellent."He added: "I am 100% certain that this was a puma or panther-like animal and was definitely not a dog, cat or any other domestic animal. It was not something I had seen before other than in a zoo."

Wednesday 26 January 2011

Bigfoot in the news.


Scientific Evidence of Bigfoot at IUS Seminar
By Matt Knapp January 25th, 2011
Dr. Jeff Meldrum, a biology professor at Idaho State University, will be visiting Indiana University Southeast to discuss the science behind Bigfoot in a seminar hosted by the School of Natural Sciences.Despite the media publicity surrounding hoaxes of the mysterious ape-like creature commonly known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch, Dr. Meldrum is expected to share scientific evidence that large, primate type footprints do exist, and in his opinion warrant further scientific evaluation.Dr. Meldrum, whose research has primarily focused on vertebrate and evolutionary morphology, has collected an extensive database of recorded data and possible track castings of the footprints left by this elusive cryptid species. His travels during his quest for answers has taken him all over the U.S. including right here in the state of Oklahoma. The “Sooner State” has a long history of Bigfoot sightings, and Meldrum has analyzed several track castings from Oklahoma that he believes to be the real deal.During the seminar Dr. Meldrum will also be signing copies of his book “Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.” The seminar will be taking place January 27th at 12:20 p.m. in the Life Science Building, room 235.For more information, call the IUS School of Natural Sciences at (812)941-2284.
Continue reading on Examiner.com: Scientific Evidence of Bigfoot at IUS Seminar - Tulsa Cryptozoology | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/cryptozoology-in-tulsa/scientific-evidence-of-bigfoot-at-ius-seminar#ixzz1C8Pnv0wb

Did This Security Camera Capture Bigfoot?
Submitted by Javier Ortega
Making its way around the paranormal blogs, are these two videos that were recently uploaded to YouTube. The uploader claims to have captured a Bigfoot on his security camera. When he went out to investigate, he managed to film the large footprints and gait that was indented in the snow. Although the security camera recording is degraded, one can observe what looks like a bipedal creature stomping its way through the yard. It appears to be walking quite fast and has a large gait. I’m not an expert on animal locomotion, but whatever it is, it seems quite large.Alright, the videos are up and the person who owns the security camera posted a zoomed version of the video. Let’s put on our detective hats and dissect this one
See video and read rest here:

Saturday 22 January 2011

New Pterosaur find


21 January 2011 Fossil female pterosaur found with preserved egg
By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News
For fossil hunters, it represents one of those breakthrough moments.A pterosaur has been found in China beautifully preserved with an egg.The egg indicates this ancient flying reptile was a female, and that realisation has allowed researchers to sex these creatures for the first time.Writing in Science magazine, the palaeontologists make some broad statements about gender differences in pterosaurs, including the observation that only males sported a head-crest.David Unwin, a palaeobiologist in the Department of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, was part of the research team. He told the BBC the discovery was astonishing: "If somebody had said to me a few years back that we would find this kind of association, I would just have laughed and said, 'yeah, maybe in a million years', because these sorts of things are incredibly rare." Pterosaurs, also sometimes referred to as pterodactyls, dominated the skies in the Mesozoic Era, 220-65 million years ago. Although reptiles like the dinosaurs were plodding on the ground below them, they were not actually dinosaurs themselves - a common misconception.This particular specimen has been dated to about 160 million years ago.

Wednesday 19 January 2011

The Kikiyaon, real or imaginary?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Saturday 15 January 2011

Mammoth to be cloned says academic.


Mammoth 'could be reborn in four years'
By Julian Ryall in Tokyo 2:13PM GMT 13 Jan 2011
The woolly mammoth, extinct for thousands of years, could be brought back to life in as little as four years thanks to a breakthrough in cloning technology.Previous efforts in the 1990s to recover nuclei in cells from the skin and muscle tissue from mammoths found in the Siberian permafrost failed because they had been too badly damaged by the extreme cold.But a technique pioneered in 2008 by Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama, of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology, was successful in cloning a mouse from the cells of another mouse that had been frozen for 16 years.Now that hurdle has been overcome, Akira Iritani, a professor at Kyoto University, is reactivating his campaign to resurrect the species that died out 5,000 years ago."Now the technical problems have been overcome, all we need is a good sample of soft tissue from a frozen mammoth," he told The Daily Telegraph.He intends to use Dr Wakayama's technique to identify the nuclei of viable mammoth cells before extracting the healthy ones. The nuclei will then be inserted into the egg cells of an African elephant, which will act as the surrogate mother for the mammoth.Professor Iritani said he estimates that another two years will be needed before the elephant can be impregnated, followed by the approximately 600-day gestation period.

Woolly Mammoth (Smithsonian Prehistoric Zone)

Friday 14 January 2011

Did Dinosaurs live longer than first thought?


This is an old article but those interested in cryptozoology will find it interesting. Did dinosaurs survive longer than first thought?

"Lost World" of Dinosaurs Survived Mass Extinction?Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News May 1, 2009
An isolated group of dinosaurs somehow survived the catastrophic event that wiped out most of their kind some 65.5 million years ago, a new study suggests.Dinosaurs of this "lost world," in a remote region of the U.S. West, may have outlived their doomed relatives by as much as half a million years, according to James Fassett, an emeritus scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Santa Fe, New Mexico.Fassett, who has argued for years that some dinosaurs survived the mass extinction, based his latest work on fossils from the San Juan Basin in what is now Colorado and New Mexico.There, the bones of hadrosaurs, tyrannosaurs, anklyosaurs, and several other species were found together in a sandstone formation that dates to the Paleocene epoch—the time period after the so-called Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction event, which is thought to have killed off the dinosaurs.As with his past research, Fassett's latest find is likely to continue sparking controversy among paleontologists."Every few years someone claims to have [found] Paleocene 'surviving' dinosaurs," said Hans-Dieter Sues, associate director for research and collections at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.But so far, such fossils have eventually turned out to be older remains.In his new study, appearing in the April 2009 issue of the journal Palaeontologia Electronica, Fassett argues that a single hadrosaur fossil helps prove that the San Juan dinos really are from the Paleocene.
Read rest here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090501-dinosaur-lost-world.html

A Living Dinosaur: In Search of Mokele-Mbembe
Drums Along the Congo: On the Trail of Mokele-Mbembe, the Last Living Dinosaur
Dinosaurs Living Relatives (Natural History Series)
Living Dinosaurs: Fact or Fiction