June 14, 2008
Besides my recent Cryptomundo postings on the dodo and the moa-nalo, I have written other past entries here, which have reviewed the following often cryptic flightless bird species: elephant bird, more dodo, terror birds, more terror birds, moa, more moa, and takahē.
In line with a question during an earlier discussion about how might have the dodo really appeared, the famed artist and Hollywood special effects man Bill Munn, well-known for his reconstruction of Gigantopithecus (below), contacted me.
Munns wrote: “I have done scientific reconstructions of the Dodo (of how they may have looked) with all coloration based on actual descriptions and the head sculpted from a skull cast provided by the Harvard Museum of Natural History.”
The following reconstruction is what Bill Munns created of the dodo, and may be the closest thing we have to how a living dodo looked in the wild.
Additionally, Munns attached a portrait photo of Aepyornis maximus, the elephant bird, based on a skull cast of the best specimen in the Natural History Museum of Paris, done for a full body reconstruction that the museum now has in its collection.
Speaking of what extinct birds might have looked like, Darren Naish has a new somewhat technical blog entitled “You’re Not a Protophorusrhacid,” with some words about the following reconstruction:
Rufous-vented Chachalaca.
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.
Filed under Artifacts, Breaking News, Cryptomundo Exclusive, Cryptotourism, CryptoZoo News, Cryptozoologists, Cryptozoology, Evidence, Extinct, Eyewitness Accounts, Forensic Science, Fossil Finds, Megafauna, Replica Cryptia