WELCOME TO THE CFZ BLOG NETWORK: COME AND JOIN THE FUN

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...

Search This Blog

WATCH OUR WEEKLY WEBtv SHOW

SUPPORT OTT ON PATREON

SUPPORT OTT ON PATREON
Click on this logo to find out more about helping CFZtv and getting some smashing rewards...

SIGN UP FOR OUR MONTHLY NEWSLETTER

Check it out here


Unlike some of our competitors we are not going to try and blackmail you into donating by saying that we won't continue if you don't. That would just be vulgar, but our lives, and those of the animals which we look after, would be a damn sight easier if we receive more donations to our fighting fund. Donate via Paypal today...




Friday, July 13, 2012

CFZ HAIR ANALYSIS NEWS

I had a long discussion with Lars Thomas earlier today. He has more news on the analysis of the hair samples brought back from Sumatra at the end of last year. They were split into several different groups, and although we have not heard yet from either Dr Todd Disotell in New York, or Professor Brian Sykes in Cambridge, we can now reveal that although the hair does appear to be primate, the Danish team were unable to sequence enough fragments of DNA to tell whether it is monkey, gibbon, orang utan or even human, let alone orang pendek. The hairs were just too badly degraded, and in Lars’ opinion there was nothing else that could be done with the samples that he was given. Let’s hope that the other two teams have better luck.

In a related piece of news, Lars has been working on a scat sample preserved in alcohol sent to us by one of Richard’s Ukrainian colleague from the 2008 Russian expedition.

Unfortunately, the DNA laboratories have closed for the summer and therefore attempts at DNA sequencing have not been done. However, Lars has extracted a number of hairs from the faecal mass, and we are able to confirm that they are from small rodents. Whatever produced the scat had been feeding on mice and other small mammals of that ilk. We will keep you informed of developments as we get them.

Posted by at

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'll be honest and say that out of all the possibilities I had considered on the matter, this would have to be the one result I HADN'T counted on. I hope that we might get at least a general ballpark category from the other DNA test results. "Something like an Orangutan" would help at the very least!

7:08 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)