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...

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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...




Saturday, August 09, 2014

CRYPTOLINK: Mythical ‘Sea Serpent’ Comes into the Light

A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting (sometimes for the wrong reasons), usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me. 

A glimpse by artist E. Paul Oberlander (www.poberlanderart.com) of an idealized oarfish.
Artist’s view of an oarfish, alive in the ocean depths. (Illustration by E. Paul Oberlander ©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Davy Jones’ Locker, it might be called, this final resting place of a sea serpent.  In a darkened back room at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland, ichthyologists Jeff Williams and Kris Murphy prepare to break the seal of a time capsule, a faded jar the color of yellow-green sea glass. A container that is a coffin.
Hidden on a dark upper shelf for 47 years, an  oarfish has come into the light. (Photograph by Sandra Raredon.)
Hidden on a dark upper shelf for 47 years, an oarfish has come into the light. (Photograph by Sandra Raredon.)
Williams and Murphy lift the lead-weight jar from the uppermost shelf at the end of a row in the support center’s fish collection, place it on a steel cart, and wheel it to a lab where fluorescent lights illuminate the contents. And where there are instruments for prying open the tightly shut, three-feet-high by one-foot-wide jar.
Once through the lab’s double-door entrance, Williams tries to free the jar’s top. “That lid is wedged in almost like it was superglued shut,” he says.
Finally, after several twists of a wrench, open sesame. Within, an 11-feet-long fish with iridescent fins lies in repose, floating in preservative.
An oarfish that measures more than 11 feet.
Scientists at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center measure a long-lost oarfish: 11 feet, 2 inches. (Photograph by Sandra Raredon.)
It’s an adult oarfish that, at best guess, washed up near St. Petersburg Beach, Florida, on April 6, 1967. According to a report in the next day’s St. Petersburg Times, retired Rear Admiral Edward Ellsberg found the fish floating in the Gulf surf and dragged it ashore.
Ellsberg hauled it to the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries Laboratory in St. Pete Beach. Scientists there donated the oarfish to the Smithsonian.
Little but a one-inch silver tag reading USNM (U.S. National Museum) 201458, a clue buried with the fish, heralds its existence. Marker aside, there’s no record of the oarfish in the museum’s database. The fish had been lost in time, its grave undisturbed for 47 years.
Now the “sea serpent” has come to light. It will receive an official catalog date: 2014. It’s the only adult oarfish in the Smithsonian’s collections.
The fish’s half-dollar-sized silver eyes seem to register our presence. I reach out to touch its scales. They’re firm and far from cold. Shimmering flecks soon cover my hand.
Read on...

BIGFOOT NEWS IN BRIEF



Native Americans Reveal Secrets Of Bigfoot
Truth Frequency Radio TFAdmin
I've discovered some very interesting articles written in “The Oregonian” 88 years ago on the subject of Bigfoot. Most articles of the time made light of ...

'Squatchers' believe Bigfoot could be lurking in Washington woods
In this July 11, 2014 photo, a bigfoot sticker is illuminated on the window of John Ray's car as his sons, Mike and Christopher, sit inside during a hunt ...

This Explains Why the Bigfoot Mystery May Always Exist
This is an excellent article written by Carl Zimmer talking about the recent Sykes DNA study, and why the mystery of bigfoot may always exist.

Bigfoot
South Jersey had it's own bear watch for a while. Now, a black bear was seen walking down the street further north in Jefferson Township

Watch This Incredible Bigfoot Footage and Actually Hear It Growl
Watch This Incredible Bigfoot Footage and Actually Hear It Growl. The cameraman claims to have been 5 miles north of Blue Ridge, GA when he

Momo The Missouri Monster Bigfoot
Join investigators Tom Burnette and Rob Riggs on their amazing adventure into the wild where the mysterious creature known as Bigfoot dwells.

Sasquatch could be lurking in Snohomish County
That's why, he continues, squatchers on Animal Planet's "Finding Bigfoot" series haven't captured the creature on film. Ray appeared in an episode 

FORTEAN BIRD NEWS FROM THE WATCHER OF THE SKIES


What has Corinna's column of fortean bird news got to do with Cryptozoology?

Well, everything actually!

In an article for the first edition of Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that cryptozoology is the study of 'unexpected animals' and following on from that perfectly reasonable assertion, it seems to us that whereas the study of out-of-place birds may not have the glamour of the hunt for bigfoot or lake monsters, it is still a perfectly valid area for the Fortean zoologist to be interested in.





TODAY'S BIG CAT NEWS

The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper-column inches than any other cryptozoological subject. 

There are so many of them now that we feel that they should be archived by us in some way, so we are publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in. 

The worldwide mystery cat phenomenon (or group of phenomena, if we are to be more accurate) is not JUST about cryptozoology. At its most basic level it is about the relationship between our species and various species of larger cat. That is why sometimes you will read stories here that appear to have nothing to do with cryptozoology but have everything to do with human/big cat interaction. As committed Forteans, we believe that until we understand the nature of these interactions, we have no hope of understanding the truth that we are seeking.


  • NEWSLINK: Indian tiger captured in Pakistan
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  • UK SIGHTINGS: Chelmer Village resident 'very afra...
  • NEWSLINK: Tiger Rips Off 11-Year-Old Boy's Hand a...


  • NEWSLINK: Cougar fatally injures Spokane-area hor...

  • THE GONZO BLOG DOO-DAH MAN LOSES IT

    The Gonzo Daily - Saturday
    The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#90) will be available to read or download at www.gonzoweekly.com later today. It has the legendary Steve Bolton on the cover and an interview with him inside, in which he casually drops more names than I have ever heard in an interview before, including Keith Richards and Dr John, as well as his first band Atomic Rooster and the currently reformed 6foot3. We also have Tony Palmer remembering his friend Felix Dennis and a feature about the reissued edition of Palmer's 'The Trials of Oz'. Gentle Giant fans will find a critique of the new box set of 'The Power and the Glory', critiqued by Doug Harr. There are also new shows from the wonderfully eccentric Jaki and Tim on their Submarine, and from the multi-talented Neil Nixon at Strange Fruit and from M Destiny (hopefully fully recovered from his recent illness) a collection of more news, reviews, views, interviews and long nosed potoroos (OK, no weird little marsupials, but I got carried away with things that rhymed with OOOOS) than you can shake a stick at. And the best part is IT's ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
    Read the previous few issues of Gonzo Weekly:
    All issues from #70 can be downloaded at www.gonzoweekly.com if you prefer. If you have problems downloading, just email me and I will add you to the Gonzo Weekly dropbox. The first 69 issues are archived there as well. Information is power chaps, we have to share it!
    To make sure that you don't miss your copy of future issues make an old hippy a happy chappy and subscribe
    http://eepurl.com/r-VTD
    As well as the Gonzo Weekly, there is a daily service called - wait for it - The Gonzo Daily, and you can subscribe for free HERE:
    http://eepurl.com/OvPez
    *  The Gonzo Daily is a two way process. If you have any news or want to write for us, please contact me at  jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and want to showcase your work, or even just say hello please write to me at gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and spread the word about this magazine as widely as possible. We need people to read us in order to grow, and as soon as it is viable we shall be invading more traditional magaziney areas. Join in the fun, spread the word, and maybe if we all chant loud enough we CAN stop it raining. See you tomorrow...

    *  The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine (mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about it at this link: www.gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit-to-print.html
    * We should probably mention here, that some of our posts are links to things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest guv!

    *  Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an old hippy of 54 who - together with an orange kitten named after a song by Frank Zappa puts it all together from a converted potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the orange kitten?

    NEWS FROM NOWHERE - SATURDAY

    ON THIS DAY IN 

  • Kenyan poachers go back to the future using spears...
  • Woman sneaks into Berlin Zoo seal pool for swim
  • A major study of all penguin populations
  • Cyclops lamb born with one eye in Turkey emerges i...
  • Shouting man calls ducks into line
  • Video of mystery animal recorded in Norwalk enhanc...

  • Eels given paths to help them get around Braunton

  • AND TO WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK...
    (Music that may have some relevance to items also on this page, or may just reflect my mood on the day)