More Moa News
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 9th, 2008
As a followup to the recent story about Rex Gilroy’s proposed expedition to look for living Moas in the Urewera forest, Tony Lucas shares the latest.
Hawke’s Bay cryptozoology researcher Tony Lucas is keeping an open mind on the possibility of moa still being alive in the Ureweras but thinks the evidence could point to emus.
Mr Lucas, unable to join the hunt for New Zealand’s hidden species because of ill health, and who is confining his role mainly to researching other reports, says modern claims of moa sightings in New Zealand have mainly been in the South Island.
The greater human population of the North Island has made it less likely that moa could exist without being found.
But he says there have been emus in the Ureweras, where Australian cryptozoologists Rex and Heather Gilroy plan to start a new search for moa at the end of next month.
They have plaster casts of possible moa prints seen mainly in mud in the area six years ago, and on another visit in November found harder tracks and evidence of what they believe may have been a nesting area.
Mr Lucas, who operates the website nzcryptozoologist0.tripod.com – which has had more than 1500 hits in it first year – hopes reports of sightings of moa and other species presumed extinct will encourage others who have kept sightings secret for fear of ridicule to come forward with their evidence.
He is concerned that sightings made by New Zealanders in New Zealand don’t seem to be taken as seriously as those reported by visitors such as Rex and Heather Gilroy, but there have been many claims of sightings of unusual animals over the years.
His own interest began when, as a youngster, he heard about his uncles’ sighting of an unusual beast in the Ruahines. “They were terrified and wouldn’t speak about it,” he said.
It wasn’t something they would talk about, but it resembled the moehau, a half-man half- beast type of being reported to have been seen in earlier times in the Coromandel.
Such fears were heightened by reports of the deaths of two people in that area in the 1880s.
Mr Lucas says there are several cryptozoologists active in New Zealand, and his own website includes research of many sightings.
They range from the moehau, big cats such as the panther-like creature reported on the Canterbury Plains, and giant gecko and lizards, to the moa. by Doug Laing, “First it was moa, now it’s emus? ,” 8 January 2008, Hawke’s Bay Today
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
ok, call me slow, but i’ve only just clicked who rex gilroy is.
quite frankly, having done so i will hold absolutely no store in whatever he might claim to find on this or any other expedition.
Mr gilroy has spun a career out of making up ludicrous stories based on absolutely no credible evidence (i.e., that there was a hominid race in australia predating the aborigines based on a few vaguely skull shaped rocks which clearly are just rocks), often with a very dubious racist undertone (e.g., this race is supposed to have taught the aborigines everything they know, because, by fairly explicit implication, aborigines could not possibly have come up with such inventions themselves), and with a fair dose of paranoia thrown in (the reason that no-one takes him seriously in ‘mainstream science’ is due- of course- to the fact that there is a major conspiracy to hide the truth).
he’s a crack-pot, and i suggest, a fairly unpleasant one.
still, it would be nice if someone found a moa..
oh, and of course, the pre-aboriginal race is supposed to be white…
To things-in-the-woods
For only just clicking on Mr. Gilroy’s background you appear to be quite an expert on the man.
You state you will not believe any facts he presents because of your pre-conceptions of his background.
That sounds alot like phd’s talking about crypto- species to the press.
I would recommend looking at the facts without any pre-conception bias and then let the review of the facts dictate your opinion.
I am not going to comment whether Rex the wonder rock finder believes in the stuff he espouses or he is just ripping gullible folk off.
But i will say Scientific evidence is quantifiable. Rex will not hand his finds over for examination to people who can identify and verify what he possesses.
As to the crack about people with post grads having a tizz, well they wouldn’t. They would love to verify something Rex would find as true.
Better than letting Dan the butcher or Sarah the hair dresser identifying homo erectus finds in central Penrith.
Or maybe not. Reverend John Johns used to teach you about people with visions, and you believed it.
U. N. OWEN- I think you need to read what I said a bit more carefully, because you misunderstand me.
I did not say that I had ‘just clicked onto his background’- I said that i had ‘just clicked’ who mr gilroy was, meaning that i had just connected the fact that the rex gilroy about to go moa seeking was the same rex gilroy as of crazy ancient australian civilisation fame. The reason I feel able to make such strong statements about mr gilroy is because I have known of Mr gilroy and his work for some time, and have read as much of his work as i could bear (although, to be completely honest the briefest of glances would tell anyone that the guy is not credible).
Also, I did not say I would not look at any evidence (or ‘facts’ as you, for some reason, say) regarding moas (or anything else) that he produces. What I said was that “i will hold absolutely no store in whatever he might claim to find on this or any other expedition”. Notice I say what he ‘claims’ to find- if he produces any evidence I will of course approach it with an open mind, as I think you will find I have always approached any evidence produced on this site (at least until it is clearly demonstrated to be in some way false or misidentified).
Taking a little more care in actually reading what other people write would really help in this field.
p.s. i’m not a phd (at least, not until – hopefully- next week).. 😉
to things-in-the-woods
I don’t believe I’ve misread your statements. You apparently have some issues with the man and have made it crystal clear that you would dismiss any evidence he provides out of hand.
This is not what should be happening. Look at the facts objectively and then draw objective conclusions. This approach needs to be used for any discipline.
Also, if you read carefully, I did not refer to you as a Phd. I was referring to the similariity in approach taken by many in academia towards areas of research not currently in favor and using their preconceptions to reject data out of hand without objectively examining the facts.
ok, U. N. OWEN this is turning into a fairly silly conversation. Unless you can qoute something that I have writen that “made it crystal clear that I would dismiss any evidence he provides out of hand”, rather than as I DID write, and subsequently pointed out to you, that I would not put any store by what he CLAIMED to have found, then there is little point going on with this.
I do ‘have issues with the man’, based on the fact that he makes ludicrous claims based on absolutely no credible evidence, and it is that that leads me to dismiss any CLAIMS he may make in the future. But let me reiterate that I would not dismiss out of hand any EVIDENCE he produces- I will approach that with an open mind. I do not think that that distinction is so hard to grasp.
And incidently, i wasn’t being entirely serious about the PhD (which is why i put a winking emoticon).
Interesting
UN OWEN, I’m afraid things is right. You’ve read a bit too much into things’s statements, and jumped to harsh conclusions because of it.
I said funny shaped rocks were ancient bones too: when I was 3.
If he finds moas, good for us. However, I seem to have caught a whiff of Biscardi’s syndrome in this guy’s background. One BS-King is enough. We already have TB-the BS-King, why do we need RG the BS-King?
QUOTE:he’s a crack-pot, and i suggest, a fairly unpleasant one. still, it would be nice if someone found a moa..
A crack Pot, he is a personal friend of mine and definitely not what your portraying him to be. What because he goes deeper than anyone else has bothered to look?
As for the white skinned-pale race that is from the Aborigines and there Dreamtime.
It is not Rex stating it from out of the blue-it relates to the URU a pre-Aboriginal civilisation., like a pre-indian civilisation..Maybe you should read up before you spout your own opinion without checking facts yourself!!
In 1963 Rex went looking for the race of whites skinned-pale;who the Aboriginals claimed in there Dreamtime legends that this race showed them their culture, rolled great boulders across the land, showed them the way to use the boomerang etc…it’s well known they said this, and by 1965 Rex was ready to give up when he stumbled onto a site which eventually culminated in the name of the race-the URU some years later.
28 years after the first 1965 discovery he cracked their alphabet. It is just a megalithic race pre aboriginal,nothing sinister so why say there is??It is not racist it’s fact!
I Just read the rest of your vile dribble, you obviously have not a clue. The URU who are not the Yowie or related forms, Rex has never said he has an URUAN skull, as all the skulls predate even them. The URU are modern humans!
I mean where are you getting this from??I guess the giant pre molar tooth is the same bag??You should read the dates before you start writing nonsense. The tooth was dated by a geologist at 500,000 yrs B.P. I twas also identified by a dentist as a pre back Molar!
The skulls range from one specimen with 13 teeth turned to ironstone, obviously pre-Aboriginal and obviously pre-URUAN.
Again where are getting your info linking these skulls to the URU??
Skeletal scientist who are in charge with receiving all skeletal remains in Australia-Rex, Heather and I met, and they were very interested in his rocks as you put it.
This from ANU (The Australian National Museum at Canberra)when Rex was asked to display a cast of the Yowie in the “Eternity Section” there.
While taking the cast to them we met these two ANU scientists, one of which who has followed Rex for 25 odd years and told Rex-‘ he cut his teeth at UNI of Rex’s Chinese Australian discoveries back in the 80’s’.
Queensland Scientist asked Rex to borrow his so called rocks, again unless you have seen them in the flesh and looked at them how can you state they are just rocks, well..they are… mineralisied skulls!!!
It is the crack pots of this world that discover the real deal, while other’s sit back and try to tarnish them.
The below sums this up better than I ever could.
The Great Aussie Battler
Some might call Rex Gilroy the cryptozoological answer to Steve Irwin. He has an all-consuming passion for the task at hand, reminds you a bit of your jittery uncle, and is equally as likely to get killed in the field. Irwin swam with deadly creatures; Gilroy goes hunting in the Ureweras. T
he Australian explorer has been uncovering Australia’s mysterious archaeological past since the 1959, during which time he has documented over 3000 reports relating to the yowie (a particular ‘hairy humanoid’ mapped back to – and dismissed as – Aboriginal folklore), along with Australian pyramid networks, Tasmanian Tigers and Moas.
In early January of this year, Gilroy said he was within photo-op distance of the little scrub moa, one of the many extinct garden vegetable varieties of moa who once roamed freely on the mighty contours of Aotearoa.
He and his wife, Heather, claim to have found hard evidence (tracks) in the Urewera ranges in November last year. Evidence, he says, that points to the existence of the Anomalopteryx didiformis, better known as the little scrub moa. Aside from tracks, the latest find includes a recently-used nest in a dead kauri tree.
In a recent interview with the Hawkes Bay Times, Gilroy refused to reveal the exact location, but has confirmed that “the location is in pretty remote country. [We] need to have more time to investigate, and if I can get something on film, that would be tremendous.”
Due to the vast similarities of moa and their luckier Australian neighbours the emu, this seems to be the most convenient sceptic bandwagon to jump on, but despite the torrent of negative reaction from scientists and the news media, there’s no stopping Gilroy. “You’ve got to be a bit eccentric in this business,” he says.
“If people think you’re a little bit crazy, they leave you alone so you can do your work.” So the mad old bastard ploy is actually just a ruse. Might be time to start paying attention to that crazy old taxi driver.
Moa may have been hunted to extinction within a century of human arrival to New Zealand. By the time you read this, the Gilroys would have been back in the country, not making such a media fuss this time, quietly going about rewriting their vague history.
One prominent archaeologist, speaking to Critic anonymously for fear of aggravating the staid hierarchy of the scientific community and upsetting his firm hold from within the academy, is on Gilroy’s side.
“It’s quite boring and predictable, actually, the reaction within the academic community to people like Rex Gilroy: that he’s only a pseudoscientist, the prints are from an emu, the photo’s far too blurry, all that stuff.
The media play along, and cast him as the crazy old uncle. But he took me up to the spot in the Ureweras. And I was blown away, to be honest. This could be it.
” Why does the scientific community appear to be so resistant to these new discoveries? “A range of reasons, from purely selfish ones, certain researchers may have put out books on extinct birds or something like that, but as far as I can see, it’s mostly snobbery.
They call people like Gilroy a joke, but that’s what they said about Orbell, and let’s not forget that Galileo and Newton were also considered pseudoscientists for the most part.”
This page shows the entire write-up for the New Zealand trek. Rex was going to the other island but they were ripped off by someone who wiped out their bank account, so they only had money for the one island-where they discovered the giant tracks. They were intending to go to both islands as Rex has evidence from there as well. This shows most of the evidence discovered on previous visits as well.
Who is the geologist who supposedly dated the “giant pre-molar tooth”?
Who is the dentist who supposedly identified it as a “pre back molar”? What animal does it come from (surely not a hominid)?
Who are the skeletal scientists who supposedly showed an interest in Rex’s “skulls”/rocks?
Who is the Queensland scientist who supposedly asked to borrow these “skulls”/rocks?
If these people really exist and these events actually happened as described then they should be easy to verify yet in all accounts of these dubious events their identities are never revealed. Supposed claims from anonymous scientists are no more reliable than those of fictional characters yet Gilroy and his followers never release important DETAILS – like their names – which makes verifying such events impossible.
Such deliberate ambiguity could be the result of when Gilroy sought to verify his “skulls” via Dr. Alex Ritchie, palaeontologist at the Australian Museum, but was informed they were simply rocks not fossils. Gilroy then dismissed Dr. Ritchie’s opinion as that of a mere fossil fish expert while claiming some sort of scientific persecution/conspiracy.
There are many valid reasons why Gilroy’s “research” is not credible or taken seriously – the main one being because it simply does not stand up to scrutiny.