This happens all the time. A specialist looks at museum specimens of some obscure critter and decides that the West African population of the red-handed tree mouse (made-up species) is a full, seperate species, rather than a subspecies. Is that Cryptozoology? Probably not. It isn't really new. It probably isn't important.
What if the species is large, or closely related to man? Then I guess I would at least put it in a grey area. If the western subspecies of chimps is really a full species as some people have claimed, then it really isn't new. We've known about the animal for centuries. We just haven't recognized it as a seperate species. It's important though. I report that sort of thing as Cryptozoology News, but I can certainly understand why some Cryptozoology people would disagree.
A few years ago, someone looked at a "potto" specimen in a museum collection and said something like, "Hey, this thing has a tail. Pottos don't have tails." A new species was found. Is that Cryptozoology? It's a new species. Is it important? I don't know. I report that sort of thing in my cryptozoology news, but again I can understand if someone doesn't consider it zoology.
Now I'm going to tantalize you a little. I stumbled across an article in one of those dry-as-bones academic journals a while back. The article described a human jawbone that dated back about 9000 years. It said that the jawbone was outside the current range of variation in the human species. It didn't claim that this jaw was from a non-Homo sapiens species of man, but it certainly left that possibility open. At the very least, this human was more different from the rest of mankind than any of the current races are from each other. And he or she was alive over 20,000 years after the last non-Homo sapiens hominids supposedly died out. I'm not going to tell you any more than that because I think there's an excellent story in there and I'm currently researching it. Would that be of interest to Cryptozoologists? Almost certainly.
That should be an easy one. That's the core of cryptozoology, isn't it? But what if the animal is species number 432 of some obscure type of tropical mouse? I probably wouldn't report that. It's new, but it probably isn't important.
There are two categories here:
1) Possibly extinct animals like the Tasmanian Wolf. I would include news about things like that.
2) Animals where museum specimens exist and there are even specimens in zoos, but virtually nothing is known about
them. Putting a specimen in a museum and writing a paper about it doesn't really change an animal from unknown
to known. If there have never been field studies we don't really know the animal. What we don't know can be important.
For example, in the last ten years, researchers discovered that an obscure but "known" rodent called
the naked mole rat has an ant-like social structure, with only one "queen" female reproducing. Within
the last couple of years researchers discovered that a crow from the island of New Caledonia makes the most versatile
use of tools of any non-human animal known. Is that sort of thing Cryptozoology? Probably not, though it's interesting
in it's own right. Maybe we should add a category of "And Related Stuff".
Then there is the case of the sun bear. It's a little bear from tropical Asia--weighs about 100 pounds. It has never been studied in the wild. Interesting thing about the sun bear: It's roughly the same size as an adult chimpanzee. I've seen three figures on its brain size. All of them are in the same general range as a chimp's brain size, and far larger than you would expect for a bear that size. What does it use that brain for? That seems like an important question to me. Is it Cryptozoology? Probably not yet, though it could easily be in the near future. Sun bear population in the wild is probably down into the hundreds, and rapid growth in that area makes it extremely endangered. Wait 10 years to study it and you'll probably be talking Cryptozoology. Again, it should probably go under "And Related Stuff".
To be part of Cryptozoology, an animal should be unknown to western science or considered extinct by western science. Whether or not it exists should be important to people outside some obscure specialty. There are a lot of grey areas, and those criteria put some things that should interest Cryptozoologists outside the field.
I would be interested in any thoughts you may have on this essay. I'm not going to give out any more information on the 9000-year-old possibly non-Homo sapiens man or woman. If you think you've found what I'm talking about, feel free to let me know. I'll tell you if you found it.
Click to e-mail me. DaleCoz@aol.com