quote:
Originally posted by NimLore:
I am wondering what positive feedback anyone has on this subject..
Do you believe that dinosaurs or other creatures that should be extinct are still alive?
What evidence do you have to support this?
Hi Nim,
I concur with what Schraf said, with one clarification. She mentioned that "Well, it is certainly possible that some species which have been believed to have
recently gone extinct could be hanging on somewhere, particularly if their habitats were very wild or remote and not very-well explored."
Recently may not necessarily be accurate, unless you consider "recently" to be equal to "within the last 100 million years". Basically, all that is required is for a relictual population of some organism to find a nice, quiet place where they can remain relatively unseen until someone stumbles across them. There are a LOT of organisms alive today that have no recent fossil ancestry for instance, principally because of the gappiness of the fossil record, so finding something that was thought to be extinct a long time ago isn't all that difficult. In addition, 3/4ths of the planet is virtually unexplored, leaving a lot of territory for remnants to hide out in - witness the coelocanth, among others. Finally, at a rough estimate, a dozen new species (especially arthropods) are being discovered every year; about once a decade (at least for the last 100 years) someone finds a representative of a new phylum! This is one of the things that makes biology so exciting: take a walk through undisturbed cloud forest, and whether you know it or not, you're likely to encounter at least one species of
something that is undocumented, unregistered, or completely unknown on any given day.
I would, however, be cautious about accepting journalists' claims of "living fossils", etc. That designation might sell papers, but is basically meaningless. Which brings me to your original question. "Cryptozoology", in the sense of "finding a living brachiosaur" or something like bigfoot, etc, is highly unlikely on land - we do know most of the out of the way corners well enough that some evidence would have been forthcoming for a species of megafauna. A new small primate, a new species of deer, a tree species that was thought extinct, etc might quite easily be hidden out. A chupacabra that preys on humans or people's livestock OTOH, because it is in contact with man (if you believe the stories), is VERY unlikely. And of course, the oceans may hide quite a few things like the coelocanth.
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