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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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Wednesday, September 09, 2009

DALE DRINNON: Meurger on Canadian Lake Monsters

Dale started at IUPUI hoping for a degree in Biology before changing to Anthropology and as a result, has a very diverse background in Geology, Zoology, Paleontology, Anatomy, Archaeology, Psychology, Sociology, Literature, Latin, Popular Culture, Film criticism, Mythology and Folklore, and various individual human cultures especially mentioning those of the Pacific and the Americas. He has a working knowledge of every human fossil find up until his graduation and every important Cryptozoological sighting up to that point. He has been an amateur along on archaeological excavations in Indiana as well as doing some local tracking of Bigfoot there. Now he is on the CFZ bloggo....

Following on from Richard's posting the other day Michel Meurger is quite wrong to say that the different sorts of lake monster reports in Canada indicates that there are no such things. That is an absurd statement. Michel Meurger is quite correct to say that the reports are contradictory but he overlooks the quite obvious conclusion that people are talking about more than one kind of lake monster in Canada.

The problem is this fixation on there being only one kind of water monster; that somehow the term "water monster" has some specific connotation. It does not; it is a generic term.

Obviously, some of the reports are fish, and reports of fish as different from one another as pikes and sturgeons. Some of the reports are obviously eels of unusual size and are stated as such specifically. SOME reports are said to be giant lizards or "Alligators" but are more likely giant salamanders. Others may be stray pinnepeds down from the frozen Arctic and the basic model is still fundamentally based on mistaken reports of mooses in the water. MOST reports are actually indeterminate; people cannot make out what they are seeing. And to top it all off, it does indeed look as if unknown outsized otters and beavers are definitely involved. Both of these have specific candidate fossil forerunners.

There are NO simple solutions.

Richard is also quite right to say that multiple-channelled rivers are personified as multiple-headed dragons. The Meikong is one such river.

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