Monster Experts Tell All

Monster experts tell all
Dragon-inspired lecture series features handful of big names
Gilbert A. Bouchard, Special to The Edmonton Journal

The cover of Swamp Thing Issue 7 features the titular monster and cryptozoologist Coleman Wadsworth, a character based on monster expert Loren Coleman, who speaks in Edmonton later this month.
Chris Schwarz, The Journal

Cost: Lectures are free with regular admission to the museum ($10 for adults, $8 for seniors, $7 for post-secondary students, $5 for youth 7-to-17, $28 for a family pass. Children 6 and under are free.)

EDMONTON – The Royal Alberta Museum’s dragon-obsessed summer continues this weekend with the launch of a two-month-long lecture series chockablock with international experts on monsters of all stripes.

As part of Dragons: Between Science and Fiction, the expansive exhibit of all-things-dragon-related, the museum is hosting a series of Sunday afternoon lectures. They start[ed on July th] with a lecture by Harry Potter expert and author Edmund Kern (talking about the role dragons play in the Potter books) and conclude Sept. 7 with a lecture by Edmonton-based author and TV host John Acorn.

These weekly talks assemble some of the world’s leading experts in dragons and their mysterious ken including well-travelled cryptozoologists such as Loren Coleman (speaking July 20), award-winning science-fiction illustrator and blockbuster film production designer (Men in Black and Pan’s Labyrinth) William Stout (Aug. 10) and internationally acclaimed biologist and author Peter Hogarth (Aug. 24).

Coleman, the world’s leading authority of cryptozoology, says this relatively new field of study is exciting because “it overlaps nature, outdoors recreation and adventure” into one easy-to- grasp package.

Cryptozoology is the scientific study of as-yet-unknown animals about which exist only circumstantial, or at best insufficient, material evidence: Everything from Western Canada’s Sasquatch to giant varieties of giant squid off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.

In short, “What better way is there to get away from a boring job than to go on a hunt for a lake monster or Bigfoot,” Coleman says, adding that cryptozoology is “proven correct every day.” More than 130 species of new vertebrates have been discovered “since the start of this year alone. … That’s a lot of new animals.”

As for still-unknown species such as the Sasquatch, Coleman says there are more than enough unexplored and underexplored forests, swamps and jungles in the world to yield a plethora of biological surprises.

“Sasquatch may still be discovered because the world is quite large and quite unknown. Eighty per cent of the land surface of Western Canada is covered in trees.”

While dragons of myth — “fire-breathing beasts with all these points and projections off their body” — interest cryptozoologists the least, Coleman says that even these over-the-top legends probably have real-world roots.

“Large monitor lizards were likely seen coming out of lakes and in the cold months their breath had a nice frosty look to it which was exaggerated into fire-breathing dragons.”

Hogarth says ancient humans may have told lots of stories about dragons, but weren’t expecting to see one actually flying overhead.

“People needed to believe in dragons as a way to explain parts of their world and history,” he says.

“The ancients didn’t have a concept of deep time like we do and wouldn’t know just how old a dinosaur fossil they’d just found really was,” he says.

“There were also times in our history when people were very much excited by stories of exotic places and exotic beasts, which puts dragons on the same plane as elephants and giraffes.

“We have to remember that images of these other exotic but real-world animals were exaggerated, snowballing from one account to another.”

Donations have dropped to nearly zero since July 3rd. Please don’t forget the museum, and remember you may directly send a check, money order, or, if outside the USA, an international postal money order made out to

International Cryptozoology Museum
c/o Loren Coleman
PO Box 360
Portland, ME 04112

Please “Save The Museum”! Easy-to-use donation buttons are now available here or merely by clicking the blank button below. Thanks everyone!

Loren Coleman 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.

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