Orang Pendek Declared New Primate Species
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 20th, 2011
The article published by the Society for Scientific Exploration is entitled “A New Primate Species in Sumatra.” And that just about says it all.
In a newly appearing, pre-published critiqued paper in EdgeScience #7, cryptozoologist Adam Davies writes in his conclusion that “a serious consideration of the scientific evidence for the orang-pendek points in two directions at once. The structural analysis of the hair suggests either an orangutan, or something very closely related to an orangutan. The DNA analysis, on the other hand, points to a human or something very closely related to humans. But why can’t it be both? Could the orang-pendek be an example of bipedal evolution from the orangutan, a relative rather than a direct ancestor, and more advanced than any we are aware of in recent human history? They display only the most primitive tool use, on a par with the chimpanzee, but they certainly have no ability to make fire. Yet all of the witnesses I have interviewed have been startled by two key features: their bipedal locomotion, and their ‘human like’ face, had they been fortunate enough to see it.”
Adam Davies, author of Extreme Expedition: Travel Adventures Stalking the World’s Mystery Animals, declares he will be returning to Sumatra before the year’s end, to continue his Orang Pendek investigations.
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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.
I read it, and it’s very persuasive. It was interesting to note he did not venture to propose a scientific binomial for the animal. What is the plan there? Also, I hate to say it , but here we are in ugly reality – very few anthropologists outside those already consulted are going to pay any attention to an article in a magazine that also talks about mediums and homeopathy. Did he try for, say, New Scientist? The quality is there.
Hmmm, where is the holotype?
Matt and Vpanoptes say it for me.
This doesn’t say “confirmed by science.”
But, not having seen anything like this yet for the yeti or sasquatch, maybe I should cautiously say “a step in the right direction.”
Loren,
Thank you for mentioning the article on Cryptomundo.
Matt, thank you for your kind words. If I can give you some background to how I came to write the article, you may find it useful.
Patrick Huyghe asked me if I would write a piece for the magazine, about the Orang-Pendek.
It was only after I spent some time sitting down thinking about what I was going to write, that I came up with this article.
Thus, unless Patrick had instigated it, I would never have come up with it, but I am very glad indeed that he did!
The weight of evidence, over years, analysed by different academics, in totally different fields, led me to the irrefutable conclusions contained within it.
As you know this is the product of field trips made by myself and other dedicated people on my teams.
As for your second point, the only thing I did consciously avoid doing, is naming it. I didn’t want that to be the focus of what people discussed.
I am happy for someone else to do that.
As you know, I care very deeply what happens to the Orang-Pendek and its environment.
The motivation behind this piece is to give the creature the proper scientific recognition it deserves.
In doing so we may help to preserve it, through added scientific interest, before it dies out.
All regular Cryptomundo readers will understand how passionately I care about this subject.
I sent it to Jeff Meldrum, who has already been kind enough to compliment me on it.
Interesting article. But I have to take issue with Davies’ speculation of “why can’t it be both” in regards to the discrepancy with the hair structure vs. the DNA. Davies postulates that the evidence may point to a bipedal ape that evolved from the orang utan, but what the evidence presented implies to me is an unknown hominid more closely related to humans , which happens to have evolved a similar hair structure to orang utans. The sentence that states the DNA was much closer to human implies that it was closer to human than to orangs. There’s about a 5% difference in DNA between the orangs and humans, much greater than any other great ape.
Perhaps what we have instead is a case of convergent evolution in terms of the hair structure with the orang pendek developing hair that serves a similar function to that of the orang utan.
Are there any plans for the DNA and hair structure analyses to be formally developed into a scholarly article submitted to a peer-reviewed science journal?
This is a pretty exciting development, and I hope it leads to further confirmation of an unknown species of primate which science has up to now ignored for the most part. Great stuff, Adam.
I did have one question.
Where in this article is the eyewitness evidence?
In the case of this animal (as with the sasquatch and yeti), I find eyewitness evidence to be – by far – the most compelling evidence. But it isn’t mentioned here except in passing. The forensic evidence discussed deserved the space it got, if not more. But a section on the sightings would have been longer, and more compelling, just from what I have read. Did space limitations dicatate culling?
One thing that crypto needs to assert, and do so strongly, is the power of eyewitness testimony. It has long been an easy scoftical toss-off that “eyewitness testimony is poor evidence.” No it isn’t. Homo sapiens, among all species, is the nonpareil witness and recorder. When this evidence has frequency (many are seeing it) and coherence (they all seem to be describing the same thing), and the chance seems remote in the extreme that they are copycatting, over-generalizing or comparing notes, then the eyewitness evidence takes on a power equal to anything else on offer.
Jurisprudence considers the eyewitness critical. We live well over nine-tenths of our lives on total reliance on what we see. And seven billion of us, and counting, are incontrovertible evidence as to the veracity of the eyewitness. Cryptozoology needs to stress this.
Hi DWA,
Your points are well made, and yes, eyewitness accounts are very important indeed.
There is only so much you can put in one article, and the focus of this one had to be the substantive scientific evidence gathered.
I do post eyewitness accounts. Some historic ones are mentioned in my book,and you can see an example of a recent sighting on both John Carlon’s paranomalist website, and that of Dave Archers, on the last Sumatra expedition, on the CFZ website.
If you want anymore info, I am always happy to share.
You can mail me through my blog.
I note how often you contribute to Cryptomundo, and I enjoy reading your posts. 🙂
Adam, honey…
Show me the Monkey…
Okay?
Cass_of_MPLS: Nice try at humor, but wrong.
It’s an ape, not a monkey. Orang Pedek has been linked with apes, not monkeys. Orangutans, chimps and gorillas are apes. We humans descended from apes, not monkeys. Monkeys include baboons, howlers, spider monkeys and other lesser primates. We struggled so hard over millions of years to get up here, so let’s try to get our history and our primates straight, okay?