There are no doubt very important finds lurking in dusty storeroom corners, or even under a pile of junk in a boiler room. I often find myself speculating as to whether we actually already do have concrete fossil evidence for sasquatch or other cryptids boxed up in some museum basement somewhere.

It must be also noted that there is a chance these fossils are gone for good. Sometimes things are stolen, destroyed, or in some cases plain old thrown out. Consider the case of PhD student Daniel Bennet. The guy spent five years toiling in the jungles of the Philippines collecting around 35 kg of feces from the rare butaan lizard. It was the largest, most complete dietary record for this rare animal ever compiled, and what happened? The whole thing was accidentally thrown away by a lab technician. Why? Because it was apparently not marked correctly. Museum personnel, scientists, and yes, lab technicians are not perfect. Mistakes happen.

Whether through greed, carelessness, oversight, or even sheer stupidity, it is unfortunate yet inevitable that some amazing finds are going to vanish.

The middle picture looks a little too much like an Egyptian god, with the body of a man and the head of an animal. Not as cool a god as Sobek, though.

Isn’t it funny how there’s always a picture of these slightly human looking bipedal apes getting whipped by some sort of predator?

The monkeys in the trees must be laughing at them!

So much for natural selection when you have X amount of predators waiting for an ape’s toes to start becoming less opposable, so that they start walking on the ground more frequently and can’t climb so good anymore – dinner!

I wasn’t stopping by, I’m pretty much a cyber resident – I’m at this site most days waiting for the next titbit from Mr Coleman.

Sorry for the venting, I love cryptozoology, but I dislike certain popular theories stated as fact (That isn’t directed at you Loren), and I guess to point out the flaws in them is a hobby of mine.

Alligator, my sentiments exactly on the fallibility and agendas of some scientists.

Don’t believe me? In many scientific circles there are various camps built around certain theories or interpretations. Go to a conference or symposium where papers are presented and you often hear the presenters “slash and burn” alternative viewpoints. This is why scientific theory and interpretations are constantly changing and now thanks to technology those changes occur more rapidly than ever. Even old data and artifacts are being reexamined and new interpretations emerging. Being extremely dogmatic, even with a “scientific fact” could eventually turn out to be a tenuous position. I don’t disdain science or the scientific method, I merely advocate being alert to the potential flaws and changing interpretations that I noted above.

As for losing stuff, consider that war generally produces chaos even in a non-combat zone. A real miracle would have been for these fossils to have survived and gotten safely out of China.

Even in the best of circumstances, artifacts sometimes go missing from museums or field expeditions. For example, a set of George Washington’s dentures were stolen from the Smithsonian in 1976, not an easy feat to pull off. Near my home in 1968, the remains of a mammoth were found during road construction. Evidence showed the bones had been cut and charred which was significant (someone ate him). The bones were photographed, packed in plaster and retrieved by the University of Illinois. No one can find them today. Maybe a janitor said “what are these chunks of plaster all over the place?” and hauled them off to a dumpster. Or maybe they are still in crates in corner of a boiler room covered with mechanical junk. Who knows?

Remember the conclusion of “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” when the ark is packed off to oblivion in a massive government warehouse? There is more truth in that than many people realize. Some of the recent dynamic dinosaur discoveries are coming not from bones being excavated in the field, but the bones collected decades ago and “rediscovered” in existing collections.

Or about hit and miss dating methods.

Or about the inherent circularity of the geoligic column.

Or about all the things stated in blind faith about human origins.

Lakini wanapenda mungu! Na nyama ya choma!