In some cases, a particular fossil will shatter some of our preconceptions of how an animal evolved.

I typically have no problem with a lack of fossil record for a cryptid per say. Where I usually take pause is when not only is there no fossil record of a creature, but absolutely no record of any related animals, intermediate animals, or anything even remotely resembling the cryptid in question.

It’s not a sure sign that the cryptid in question can’t possibly exist, but it is odd. It is one thing to be lacking a fossil for something, but quite another to have a complete evolutionary blank of anything even remotely like it anywhere in the fossil records of an area. This is a bit harder to explain.

But yeah, it is hard to use such an incomplete and sketchy record to “prove” something can’t have survived into the present day. Then again, as is usual in science, it is not up to the naysayers to prove us wrong but rather for us to prove the proposed animal exists. The onus of proof is on the one who proposes something. Skepticism is the default.

So a fossil of a mososaur or sauropod demonstrably existing past their extinction orthodoxy certainly wouldn’t hurt.

That’s why I have so much trouble with people who talk about the fossil record and how it supposedly “proves” that things like mososaurs, plesiosaurs, sauropods, etc. didn’t live into the present…the fossil record is nowhere near complete. We have representations from regions and areas, but we most certainly do NOT have all the facts on the fossil record. It’s another invalid argument against cryptids.

The discovery of these kinds of creatures opens up the possibility and the probability that there’s most definitely still a lot down there that we have no clue about–unless you take into account all the plethera of sea monster sightings:)