Skeptic Check: Monster Mashup
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on December 20th, 2013
Monsters don’t exist. Except when they do. And extinction is forever, except when it isn’t. So, which animals are mythical and which are in hiding?
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Bigfoot sightings are plentiful, but real evidence for the hirsute creature is a big zilch. Yet, the coelacanth, a predatory fish thought extinct, actually lives. Today, its genome is offering clues as to how and when our fishy ancestors first flopped onto land.
Meanwhile, the ivory-billed woodpecker assumes mythic status as it flutters between existence and extinction. And, from passenger pigeons to the wooly mammoth, hi-tech genetics may imitate Jurassic Park, and bring back vanished animals.
Guests:
Donald Prothero – Paleontologist, geologist, former professor at Occidental College, co-author of Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids
Chris Amemiya – Biologist and geneticist at the University of Washington and the Benaroya Research Institute, Seattle
John Fitzpatrick – Ornithologist and director, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University
Ben Novak – Visiting biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, lead coordinating scientist of “The Great Comeback” at the Revive and Restore project, Long Now Foundation
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
Arrogant, straw-man burner. Also an incredibly self contradicting
and agenda driven elitist. The little smug NPR radio types also bow at his feet with no argument… oh,WELL(!); since they’ve obviously only heard of very fringe events like a couple well publicized hoaxes they are now judge and jury. Typical snobs who rely on the similarly UN-informed to enthrone themselves the intelligentsia of society.
“Bigfoot sightings are plentiful, but real evidence for the hirsute creature is a big zilch.”
Guess the writer of that hasn’t informed himself much, and now that the PGF has more or less been proven authentic statements like the above are pure ignorance.
Can’t be bothered with woo-woo trash.