Pterodactylus Alive?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 5th, 2010
The new issue of Fortean Times contains an intriguing piece by Ulrich Magin:
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Probably most children who take an interest in cryptozoology will have been influenced by their reading of Arthur Conan Doyle’s great advent ure The Lost World (replaced for modern kids, no doubt, by a viewing of Spielberg’s Jurassic Park!). I still vividly recall the scene where the Pterodactylus that Professor Chall enger has brought from the Lost World is last seen at Start Point by the liner SS Friesland, which is “passed by something between a flying goat and a monstrous bat.”
In 1873, a similar story, actually reported as truth, appeared in many newspapers. The prehist oric beast is called a “vampire”, assimilating the earlier legend of the bat-like bloodsucker with new palæontological discoveries.
The story, taken from the American newspaper Alta California concerns the adventures of the steamship Nevada in Micronesia:
Read the rest, here.
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 love old stories like this because you can see that reports of living fossils go back a long time.