Legendary creature

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Official Post from Michael J. Tresca

Hippogriffs (pronounced:/ˈhɪpoʊgrɪffs/HIP-o-griffs6) were chimeric magical beasts related to griffons. However, they possessed the physical characteristics of horses, rather than lions and did not share the same intelligence. The origins of these beasts has been lost to time.7 1 Description 2 Ecology 2.1 Combat 3 Ecology 3.1 Habitats 3.2 Relationships 3.3 Usages 4 Appendix 4.1 Gallery 4.2 Appearances 4.3 References Hippogriffs had the body of a horse, with the wings and head of a hawk or…

Dobhar-chú carved upon Grace Connolly's tombstone (© Daev Walsh) At no more than 39 in long in total length, the Asian small-clawed otter Aonyx (=Amblyonx) cinereus is the world's smallest species of living otter. As a result of how commonly it is exhibited in British zoos, however, it is possibly the most familiar one to many people here – more so, in fact, than our own larger native species, the Eurasian otter Lutra lutra, up to 4 ft long on average (and confirmed maximum length of 4.5…

The two so-called Civil War Pterodactyl thunderbird photographs: the PTP photo (top) and the AP photo (bottom) (both photos © FreakyLinks/Haxan Films/Regency Television/20th Century Fox Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only) Over the years, I have documented on ShukerNature a number of alleged thunderbird photographs (some of them even being claimed on various online sites to be THE infamous, missing thunderbird…

Saltwater crocodile at Australia Z00 (© Sheba/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 2.0 licence) The island of New Britain is the largest member of the Bismarck Archipelago, situated east of Papua New Guinea (PNG), the latter country in turn occupying the eastern half of the mini-island continent of New Guinea and owning this archipelago. As documented in Part 1 of this 2-part ShukerNature blog article (click here to access Part 1), New Britain contains several large bodies of freshwater, one of which is…

Model of the basilosaurid (aka zeuglodontine) archaeocete Basilosaurus (© Markus Bühler) For a short time during the mid-1990s, a mysterious freshwater beast said to inhabit a lowland lake on the island of New Britain, east of New Guinea, was making waves in both the literal and the literary sense. Known mostly as the migo (but see later for a multitude of other monikers), it hit media headlines worldwide, featuring in numerous reports and articles globally, due to some very intriguing film…

In this little sub-series on various artifacts allegedly left behind by the Fair Folk, we have seen a common pattern emerging, namely that objects ancient and/or mysterious have had fairy origins attributed to them. In the cases of both the Fairy Flag and the Luck of Edenhall we have seen how valuable and rare items that were brought back from the Middle East have had their true origins forgotten and tales of faeries have filled in the gaps. However the origins all such faery finds are so…

A digital illustration of a melanistic puma's possible appearance, by cryptozoological artist William Rebsamen, which appears on the front cover of my book Mystery Cats of the World Revisited (© William Rebsamen) As I have documented on my ShukerNature blog (click here), physical evidence for the reality of melanistic (all-black) pumas Puma concolor (aka cougars, mountain lions, painters, etc) in North America is conspicuous only by its absence. Certainly, large all-black cats often…

Skeleton of Archelon (public domain) Do the vast oceans of our planet conceal great sea turtles far larger than any that are officially known to exist there? In this present ShukerNature article, I survey a number of very intriguing cases that provide tantalising intimations that this may indeed be possible. A meeting with a mega-turtle - might this scary scenario actually happen one day? (© Hodari Nundu) The largest species of sea turtle ever known to have existed was Archelon ischyros…

The shadhahvar (© Anthony Wallis) And now, as they often said on 'Monty Python's Flying Circus', for something completely different. Some of you may know that I have been working for quite a time on a companion volume to my bestselling dragons book, Dragons: A Natural History (1995). This time, however, the subject is not the dragon, but the unicorn, surveying its surprisingly numerous varieties and retelling some of its most famous, and also certain much less familiar, legends and…

Welcome, cryptozoology fans, to ShukerNature! After long resisting the temptation to enter the frenzied if fascinating world of blogging, I've finally given in to the inevitable. So here, maintaining the unofficial CFZ theme of the week, is my contribution to the "Wolves of the Weird". My Italian correspondent Igor Festari recently brought the following intriguing snippet to my attention. In Guide des Mammifères d'Europe, d'Afrique du Nord et du Moyen-Orient by Aulagnier et al (Delachaux…

An Australian pygmy copperhead Austrelaps labialis– but do non-native specimens of Austrelaps species also thrive in the wilds of New Zealand? (© Person/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence) I'm always on the lookout for reports of cryptids that have rarely received mainstream cryptozoological attention. Consequently, the following case is of particular interest to me – not just for this latter reason, however, but also because of the grave, far-reaching ecological threat that it poses to rare…