Academic Cryptozoology

To date, there is no in-depth review of the history of cryptozoology. The basic facts, dates, and names have been repeated ad nauseam (even despite some of them being incorrect), but little attention has been paid to the context of cryptozoology's proposition and the intentions of its "father", Bernard Heuvelmans. Bernard lived an incredibly storied life, leading him to take inspiration from an underappreciated diversity of sources, people, and events, all of which shine through in his cryptozoological publications. For a full biography, see Jean-Jacques Barloy's   Un rebelle de la science .  The focus of this post is only the roots and cryptozoological manifestations of Bernard's conservational stances, as well as his anti-authoritarianism. Many forget that cryptozoology was intended "to describe new animal forms as completely as possible without having to kill one of their representatives" (Heuvelmans, 1989) and to "obtain the strict protection o...

Daniel Loxton & Donald Prothero's 2013 book  Abominable Science!  remains regularly cited in publications and praised as one of the best cryptozoological books, being one of the first in a wave of early 2010's general audience publications critically analyzing and scrutinizing cryptozoology. Cryptozoological enthusiast communities regularly dismiss  Abominable Science!  as a skeptical attack on the subject rather than good-natured criticism, from two authors otherwise unassociated with the subject ("skeptical" refers to coming from the skeptic community, the Dawkins fans and their Skeptic  subscriptions). I cannot say I necessarily disagree, in part because Abominable Science!  is full of sloppy scholarship and, at times, outright misinformation - so much for being " one of the most meticulously researched and checked " books on cryptozoology... My focus here is on the chapter discussing mokele-mbembe , the alleged "living dinosaur" of Central ...