“No New Animals Are Discovered in the USA, Right?”

A frequently asked question directed to me, with the seemingly not-too-subtle answer hidden in the inquiry, is “No new animals are discovered in the USA, right?”

“But, of course, there are new species found in the USA,” is my gentle but clear response.

Indeed, new animals are found constantly throughout the world, so why should the Americas, including the USA, be any different?

One of the more relevant stories is that of the discovery of the wood bison in Alberta, just north of the USA border.

In 1957, the last remaining pure wood bison (Bison athabascae), an enormous Ice Age species not known to exist in a pure strain anywhere else in the world, was found during a regular air patrol. Federal wildlife officers flying over Alberta, trying to count whopping cranes, spotted a small, isolated herd of two hundred wood bison. The bison had gone completely unnoticed for decades – and had kept physically and genetically separate from their cousins, the plains bison, so familiar to Americans as the buffalo.

I was able to view some living wood bison, after giving a talk on cryptozoology at the Royal Alberta Museum, thanks to my guide, museum director Bruce McGillivray.

The wood bison is the largest land mammal in North America, bigger than the plains bison/buffalo.

In the USA, species of all sizes are still being discovered anew, even within the last year.

Northern Arizona University scientists released the news in August 2010 of the discovery of a new turtle in the USA, the Pearl map turtle, Graptemys pearlensis, which was found in the Pearl River in Louisiana and Mississippi.

It will be recalled that in January 2011, we learned that a previously unknown species of giant crayfish, Barbicambarus simmonis, was discovered by two aquatic biologists in Tennessee.

In February 2011, it was announced that the half-inch-long pseudoscorpion species, Cryptogreagris steinmanni, was discovered in Colorado’s high-altitude caverns, near Glenwood Springs.

Will new mammals be found hidden in the wilderness areas of the USA? Only time will tell, but don’t be surprised if the future answer is “Yes.”

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.

Email • Facebook • Twitter •