Hey with that cover and that many pages, how bad could it be…? Maybe we could have Meldrum do a review for Cryptomundo, sorta his chance to get back at the Four Horsemen of Scofftockery and the diddle they did on his book. Just an idea.

How much theorizing about what the Yowie is is in the book? Is the possibility that it isn’t a primate seriously entertained?

Just curious. (I’m THIS close to buying it.)

In theory though, a new type of primate-like creature is somewhat feasible in a way, although it may not be a primate per say. During the time that Australia has been separated from the “super-continent”, the marsupials evolved without any contact with placental animals until man introduced them. In this time, they radiated out into a large variety of forms in order to take advantage of the various ecological niches presented to them. There have been some pretty amazing creatures known through fossil records, such as the Thylacoleo (marsupial lion), so a large human sized or larger marsupial is not too far fetched. I am no specialist on the fauna of Australia, but a colleague of mine informed me that one of the only niches left apparently unfilled in Australia is that filled by bears in other parts of the world. Sorry, DWA, not the drop bear variety.

Now I am not trying to say that all of these eyewitnesses are seeing bears and tend to agree with the above posts in that regard. What it could mean, however, is that some large, herbivorous, bipedal or quasi bipedal, omnivorous, marsupial bear-”like” creature evolved to fit the niche of a bear is out there. From a zoological perspective, this isn’t entirely unfeasible and maybe this animal looks enough like a primate to be mistaken for one without actually being one. Just a thought.

I agree, and this is my main point for people who so easily write off the Jersey Devil (I’m from NJ, so it’s naturally close to my heart), just because it has so much folklore attached to it. The fact remains that hundreds of people, often in sizable groups, have seen something, and that their descriptions do bear consistent general features. You could write off the 1909 panic entirely as “mass hysteria” and still have a solid base of reports.

Not to change the focus of this thread, but my theory is that if you disregard the paranormal elements, you’re left with consistent features which match those claimed for the Thunderbird, which have been frequently sighted across the Delaware in PA. In MD, perhaps it accounts for reports of the Snallygaster. In the midwest it’s the Piasa, in Texas it’s Big Bird or a Pterodactyl. Maybe in West Virginia it’s Mothman. Same animal, just viewed through very different cultural lenses.

As for the Yowie, somebody’s seeing something, consistently, and who’s to say what it is, unless we look? Whatever it is, I think it may be quite different from Sasquatch or Yeti. Perhaps it might be distantly related to the Orang Pendek, or maybe it’s an H. erectus descendant. And yes, it could be a marsupial. I’d love for that to turn out to be the case, for it would show that high intelligence is not the sole province of primates, but something that even very different animals might attain.

You say “When you think about it, there’s no other animal they can be mistaken for. In America people may just be spotting bears, but not in Australia.”

They could be seeing drop bears, couldn’t they?

They aren’t seeing bears here, either. Although I may have some reading up to do on the Yowie, I’ve done enough on the sasquatch to say “no way” to that one. People are pretty clearly describing an ape. Or an animal that looks like a cross between a human and a gorilla, to be a bit more open-minded (as we don’t know for sure what it is yet).

But a bear? Nope. (OK, being open-minded here, not a species of bear known to exist. ) Either they are seeing what they say they are; they are flat lying…or there are drugs, or maybe airborne psychotropic bacteria, or something else widespread in this country that it might really behoove the Centers for Disease Control, never mind the ATF, to find out about.

Whatever the Yowie is, it’s like the sasquatch, apparently, in this one way: people are seeing it. That is, they’re making pretty consistent sightings of what appears to be an animal, fossil evidence or unlikelihood notwithstanding.

Conceivable? Yes. Mega-chip-bettable? I don’t think so. I know other species have apparently done the storm-rafting thing – and I guess it pretty much has to be The Major Theorem for a lot of what we’ve found on small islands, that is that we haven’t introduced. But this one seems kinda big. Although given the prowess reported for the sasquatch, maybe “drownproofing” its way over isn’t out of the question. But a breeding pop doing it? OK, conceivable. But wouldn’t the hobbit (or erectus) have done it…? From the admittedly little I’ve read, the Yowie doesn’t seem either of those.

Actually, the convergent-evolution “primate” solution proposed by D2K4 is one I’ve already hinted at on this site. Maybe it just ain’t a primate, any more than the thylacine is a dog or the cuscus a sloth or a monkey. And as funny as I’ve hinted the above artist’s view is, I’ve seen a number of other illustrations that look like that – and nothing like any hairy hominoid.

If you think about it for a minute, the only thing making that sound woo-woo is our continuing refusal to believe there could be anything close to like us anywhere in the universe.

Except, um, the chimpanzee. And the orangutan. And the gorilla.

Who, well, they still don’t, um, use tools. Um, OK, their DNA isn’t close to ours. Um, OK, but not EXACTLY….