PUBLISHED TODAY! – SHUKERNATURE BOOK 1: ANTLERED ELEPHANTS, LOCUST DRAGONS, AND OTHER CRYPTIC BLOG BEASTS

Hot off the press – with magnificent front-cover artwork by Anthony Wallis, here is my very first ShukerNature book! (© Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publications)

If I wish to read a blog which is *only* about the narrow, limited topics of my own interests, I'll write it myself. If I wish to read a well written, extremely well researched blog on a wide variety of suspected, imagined, claimed, portrayed creatures from the mundane to the monstrous, from the Byzantine and the bizarre to the modern and the miraculous - I'll read ShukerNature.

Richard S. White, retired museum professional and vertebrate palaeontologist 

 – Facebook, 12 August 2017

It's been a long time coming – over eight years, in fact, since I first mooted the idea of preserving my ShukerNature blog posts in permanent, hard-copy book format – but it's finally here. In what is planned to be a regular series, today, 8 April 2019, sees the official publication of ShukerNature Book 1: Antlered Elephants, Locust Dragons, and Other Cryptic Blog Beasts.

Although I first became yoked to the internet via an email account back in 1997, followed by my own official website a year later (created by the late, much-mourned American cryptozoologist Scott T. Norman), I steadfastly remained immune to the world of online blogging until as relatively recently as 2009 – 20 January 2009, to be precise, when I finally gave in to temptation.

For after the Centre of Fortean Zoology (CFZ) kindly established it for me in tandem with their own 'umbrella' of CFZ-affiliated blogs called the CFZ Bloggo, that was the fateful date upon which a short item entitled 'Wolves of the Weird' (click here to read it) became the first of what currently stands at over 600 illustrated articles of varying lengths and exceedingly varied subjects that have been researched, written, and uploaded by me onto my very own, unique blog. As its many loyal readers will confirm, ShukerNature is devoted to cryptozoology, zoomythology, anomalous animals, animal anomalies, and unnatural history of every kind, as well as some investigations and reviews of certain ostensibly zooform entities that may be of paranormal, supernatural identity rather than corporeal creatures of zoology. It has also enabled me to preview various in-progress and forthcoming books of mine from 2009 onwards, and, via its Comments section at the end of each of my articles, allows readers to post their own thoughts, opinions, and information, thereby becoming a valuable source of original ideas, news, and data.

Knowing that my blog's contents would cover such a vast diversity of subjects, and that they would all be written in my own particular style (unencumbered by the necessities to conform to any one specific style convention as is so often the case when writing for specific publishers or publications), posed an especial problem for me with regard to what my blog's name would be. How could I possibly come up with a title that would encompass all of those subjects in a succinct yet definitive manner, and also emphasise that these were my writings, penned in my style? In fact, as it turned out, I didn't come up with such a title – someone else did.

That person was fellow cryptozoologist and CFZ colleague Oll Lewis. After hearing that I was having trouble coining a suitable title for my blog, he achieved what to me seemed the impossible – suggesting a title that fulfilled every requirement, covered every subject, incorporated a direct reference to me in it, and much more besides, yet, incredibly, did all of this by way of just a single word! And that word, which did indeed become my blog's title? ShukerNature. Oll has never disclosed his inspirations for what was indeed a truly inspired suggestion; but because he and I are of similar generations, I think it likely that a certain book and also quite possibly a certain song that both achieved considerable fame during our youth may have played their part, consciously or otherwise.

The book was the bestseller Supernature, written by the late anthropologist/ethologist Dr Lyall Watson, and first published in 1973. Its self-explanatory subtitle A Natural History of the Supernatural also set the scene for many of his equally-acclaimed future books; as did its very memorable front-cover illustration by renowned American artist Jerry Pinkney, depicting a flowering plant growing out of an egg. Indeed, this eyecatching artwork became something of an icon in its own right (and may be a homage to 'Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man' - a famous painting from 1943 by the celebrated Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali, which contains a reminiscent image). And speaking of homages:

A ShukerNature homage to Dr Lyall Watson's inspirational book Supernature and to Jerry Pinkney's iconic front-cover illustration for it (© Mark North / © Jerry Pinkney - reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The song, entitled 'SuperNature' and released in 1977, was a disco classic by Cerrone (aka the Italio-French disco drummer/composer/record producer Marc Cerrone). In its original format, more than 10 minutes long, this song was the title (and opening) track of Cerrone's third album; but in a shorter format, just under 4 minutes long, it hit the singles charts all around the world in 1978. Its verses' lyrics (written by an uncredited Lene Lovich) took as their unusual theme for a dance song the dangers of tampering with the environment, turning ordinary creatures into dangerous monsters, with its infuriatingly-catchy chorus simply the repeatedly-sung word 'SuperNature'.

Thus was my blog, ShukerNature, born. (Amusingly, some time afterwards, a reader wrote to me saying how he had always been puzzled by my blog's title, wondering how and where it had originated – until one day, that is, when, while he had been thinking about this mystery yet again, Cerrone's song had suddenly begun to play inside his head, and the proverbial penny duly dropped with a loud clang!)

Within just a couple of years from my blog's creation, I was already receiving enquiries from readers as to whether I would be producing a ShukerNature companion book, or books, at some stage, containing selections of its most popular and intriguing blog articles. And when I enquired both on the blog itself and also via my various cryptozoology-linked Facebook pages and groups (including one devoted specifically to ShukerNature) whether there was indeed an interest out there for such a project, I swiftly received a very emphatic affirmative.

An additional reason for doing so was that by converting selections of my ShukerNature articles into a hard-copy published format, they would be rendered permanently accessible in a manner that online data, so often ephemeral in status, can rarely emulate. For whereas a book, once in print, has a guaranteed existence, a website can exist online one moment and vanish the next, thereby expunging a fund of unique, irreplaceable information.

And so I began planning what at that stage I was referring to as ShukerNature: The Book, alongside various additional writings. However, as sometimes happens, life – and death – had other plans for the direction in which my future would take. Or, as my wise little Mom used to remind me gently if I railed against my dreams and ambitions faltering or falling into disarray: "Man proposes, but God disposes" (which is a translation of the Latin phrase 'Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit', from Book I, chapter 19, of The Imitation of Christ by the German cleric Thomas à Kempis).

Thus it came to pass that my blog book was set to one side, and other projects that for one reason or another needed to take precedence were duly completed and published in its stead. Notable among these were my second, long-planned, and extremely comprehensive dragons book – Dragons in Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture; a wide-ranging compilation of my most notable Loch Ness monster writings – Here's Nessie!; and of course my fully-updated, massively-enlarged, biggest-ever cryptozoology volume – Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors.

My three above-mentioned books (© Dr Karl Shuker)

These are all now published, and in the meantime the very many additional blog articles that I have continued to research, write, and post each year have provided me with an immensely expanded list of possible examples to include in my eventual ShukerNature compendium.

Formulating how such a book could be prepared, however, was not an easy task, and took a long time to accomplish to my own satisfaction. Indeed, the eventual volume that resulted proved to be so sizeable that the decision was finally taken to divide it into two separate ones, of equal length, to be published sequentially. Consequently, and after much deliberation in the choosing of its specific subjects, I now have great pleasure in publicising herewith on its official date of publication, 8 April 2019, the first of those two volumes, in what I hope will be an ongoing series of ShukerNature books.

Its contents – now saved forever from the vicissitudes of the internet, available for you to read and re-read whenever and wherever you choose to do, updated and expanded when new information has come my way since the original articles were uploaded online, and unequivocally unlike any other collection of writings, whether in print or out of it - document some of the most remarkable, spellbinding entities from my blog's furthest frontiers and most shadowy hinterlands.

After all, where else, within the covers of a single 418-page book (and sumptuously illustrated throughout via spectacular full-colour and rare vintage b/w pictures), are you likely to find such exotic zoological esoterica as locust dragons, antlered elephants, North America's alligator men and Egypt's crocodile children, reptilian seals and seal dragons, king hares and giant rabbits, fan-tailed mermen and scaly bishops, flying cats and even flying elephants, green tigers and blue lions, giant oil-drinking spiders and bemusing sea-monkeys, demonic dragonflies and fury worms, marginalia snail-cats and elephant rats, pukwudgies and Pigasus, ape-man Oliver, lightbulb lizards, mini-mummies, my very own mystery animal, and how ShukerNature famously hit the cryptozoological headlines globally with a series of astonishing world-exclusives exposing the long-awaited truth about Trunko?

To find out more about all of these, and numerous other no less fascinating, equally eclectic fauna too, loiter no longer – it's time to pay a visit to the weirdly wonderful (and wonderfully weird!) world of ShukerNature. So, please come in, I've been expecting you...

And if you're wondering how can I possibly follow all of that, the answer is simple – ShukerNature Book 2: Living Gorgons, Bottled Homunculi, and Other Monstrous Blog Beasts – due out later this year. And don't forget - you read about it here first!

You lookin' at me?? (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Last – but certainly not least – of all: I wish to offer a massive, sincere vote of thanks to all of you for reading and supporting my ShukerNature blog since its launch in 2009 – without your enthusiasm and interest, it could not have survived – and I look forward to sharing with you many more exotic, entertaining, esoteric, educational, and always thoroughly extraordinary wildlife secrets, controversies, mysteries, surprises, and curiosities, as well celebrating many more ShukerNature anniversaries, both online and in book form, through the years to come!

Copies of ShukerNature Book 1 can be ordered through all good bookstores, and can be purchased online at such outlets as Amazon UK (click here), Amazon USA (click here), and Barnes & Noble (click here). For further details concerning it and also my three previous books published by Coachwhip Publications, please click here.

Full cover wrap, including back-cover blurb (click picture to expand for reading purposes), from ShukerNatureBook 1 (© Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publications)

AFTER EIGHT YEARS OF SHUKERNATURE THE BLOG, A FIRST GLIMPSE OF SHUKERNATURE: THE BOOK!

Early version of Anthony Wallis's awesome front-cover artwork for ShukerNature Book 1 – thanks, Ant!! (© Anthony Wallis/Dr Karl Shuker)

Due to some recurrent internet-connection problems during the past few days, I omitted to mark a memorable day in the history of my ShukerNature blog – its eighth anniversary, which occurred on 20 January 2017. So, better late than never, I am doing so now – by presenting herewith the very first sneak preview of my next book, which is none other than the long-awaited, long-promised compendium of some of my blog's most unusual and popular articles. Or, to put it another way – welcome to ShukerNature: The Book - or, to give it its full title, ShukerNature Book 1: Antlered Elephants, Locust Dragons, and Other Cryptic Blog Beasts.

My blog was scarcely two years old when, after asking among my many Facebook friends and colleagues whether a compilation volume of some of my blog articles would be of interest to them, I received a resoundingly positive response. And so I began planning it accordingly, alongside various other writing projects. However, as sometimes happens, life – and death – had other plans for the direction in which my future would take. Or, as my wise little Mom used to remind me gently if I railed against my dreams and ambitions faltering or falling into disarray: "Man proposes, but God disposes" (which is a translation of the Latin phrase 'Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit', from Book I, chapter 19, of The Imitation of Christ by the German cleric Thomas à Kempis).

And so it was that my ShukerNature book was set to one side, and other projects that for one reason or another needed to take precedence were duly completed and published in its stead. Notable among these were my second, long-planned, and extremely comprehensive dragons book – Dragons in Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture; a wide-ranging compilation of my most notable Loch Ness monster writings – Here's Nessie!; and of course my massively-enlarged, fully-updated prehistoric survivors book – Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors.

These are all now published, and in the meantime the very many additional blog articles that I have continued to research, write, and post each year have provided me with an immensely expanded list of possible examples to include in my eventual ShukerNature compendium. And now, at last, much of this book is indeed written – all of the main text, in fact, barring any last-minute changes or additions – and it will be published later this year.

Moreover, I am both thrilled and delighted that its front cover artwork is being produced by none other than a longstanding Facebook friend who is also a brilliant artist – Anthony Wallis. I am very lucky that no fewer than three of my previous books' front covers are graced by spectacular artwork that has been either produced (two) or co-produced (one) by Ant. Namely, Mirabilis (2013), The Menagerie of Marvels (2014), and Here's Nessie! (2016) (this last-mentioned book's front cover featuring both a very vibrant long-necked seal reconstruction of Nessie by Ant and a beautifully evocative plesiosaurian monsters by moonlight scene by Wm Michael Mott).

So here, opening this present ShukerNature blog article as a first glimpse of ShukerNature Book 1, is an early version of Ant's wonderful front-cover artwork for it – thank you so much, Ant, for bringing to life so vividly and with such incredible skill a unparalleled diversity of obscure, hitherto-overlooked, but effortlessly spellbinding mystery beasts that will not be found together in any other book. And so, the countdown to its publication has begun – the wait will soon be over…

An affectionate illustrative pastiche (left) by another longstanding artist friend, Mark North, inspired by and in tribute to the classic front-cover artwork of the international non-fiction bestseller Supernature (right), written by Dr Lyall Watson and first published in 1973, whose title partly inspired the naming of my blog – click here for more details (© Lyall Watson/Coronet Books / © Mark North)

REMEMBERING PEDRO – THE MISSING MINI-MUMMY OF WYOMING

Two views of Pedro plus one of his x-rays from 1950 (Wikipedia/public domain)

In a two-part ShukerNature article (click here and here) from 2009, I documented a wide range of accounts concerning mysterious dwarf-like or pygmy-like humanoid entities that have been reported across the length and breadth of North America, and are often colloquially – and collectively – referred to as littlefeet. One of the most interesting of these was Pedro, the so-called mini-mummy or mountain mummy of Wyoming, because this was an actual specimen (not just an eyewitness report or a tale from traditional folklore). Also, it had been discovered in a most unexpected location, and subsequently featured in a very intriguing chain of events. Back in 2009, my article's documentation of Pedro was fairly brief, but since then I have investigated this mystifying entity in further detail, enabling me to flesh out or highlight various aspects of its story that had previously been somewhat obscure, contradictory, or totally confused in other accounts accessed by me. Consequently, I am now presenting here a much-expanded, updated version of my original ShukerNature coverage of Pedro.

Pedro's extraordinary modern-day history may have begun one day in October 1932 (but see later for an alternative claimed date), when gold-prospectors Cecil Main (spelt 'Mayne' in some accounts) and Frank Carr blasted a hole through the wall of a ravine in the San Pedro Mountains, about 65 miles southwest of the city of Casper, Wyoming - and made a momentous discovery. The wall had been hiding a small, room-like, hitherto-sealed cavern, which contained a ledge, 2.5 ft off the ground. And sitting on that ledge, in cross-legged pixie-like pose, with its arms folded across its chest, was the mummy of a diminutive humanoid figure, with a sitting height of less than 7 in and a total height of only 14 in.

Front view of Pedro (public domain)

Sporting a tanned if wrinkled bronze-coloured skin, barrel-shaped body, well-preserved penis, large hands, long fingers, low brow, very wide mouth with large lips, and broad flat nose, this strange figure resembled a smirking old man, who seemed almost to be winking at its two amazed discoverers, because one of its large eyes was half-closed. Nevertheless, it was evident that this entity had been dead for a very long time, and its death did not appear to have been a pleasant one. Its head was abnormally flat, and was covered with a dark gelatinous substance - later examinations by scientists suggested that its skull may have been smashed by an extremely heavy blow, and the gelatinous substance was congealed blood and exposed brain tissue. Also, some reports claim that it had a broken clavicle (or scapula in certain others), as well as some broken vertebrae, and pointed "front teeth".

Due to its mountain provenance, this remarkable specimen was soon dubbed Pedro by the media, following its discovery's announcement in a report by the Casper Tribune-Herald newspaper on 21 October 1932 (but once again see later for an alternative claimed date).

When Main and Carr brought Pedro back home with them to Casper, it was widely denounced as a hoax, though some locals believed that it may indeed be one of the Little People long deemed in traditional lore to exist in the mountains. Carr died shortly afterwards, and in April 1934 Main sold Pedro to Homer F. Sherill from Crawford, Nebraska, who subsequently exhibited it encased inside a large glass dome as a curio at a circus there (as well as at several sideshows elsewhere), where it was seen by Eugene Bashor in 1936. Although he was only a boy at that time, Bashor was so fascinated by Pedro's enigmatic appearance that he went on to become a leading, longstanding investigator of North American mini-mummy and littlefoot reports.

Sideshow poster for Pedro (public domain)

Sherill owned Pedro for at least 7 years, but somehow this anomalous little entity subsequently turned up at Jones Drug Store in Meeteetse, a small town in Park County, Wyoming, where it remained on display until it was spied there one day in the mid-1940s by Ivan Goodman, a used car salesman from Casper, who reputedly purchased it from the drug store's owner, Floyd Jones, for several thousand dollars. Thereafter, Goodman utilised Pedro's eyecatching appearance to attract people to his car lot, and for which it became an unofficial mascot, with images of it being placed by Goodman in advertisements for his auto dealership. Moreover, it was during its period of ownership by Goodman that Bashor saw Pedro for a second time, in 1948, sitting on Goodman's desk.

In 1950, Goodman permitted some interested scientists to examine his 'mascot' in an attempt to uncover its true nature. The most detailed examination, including an x-ray analysis, was conducted by anthropologist Dr Henry ('Harry') Shapiro from New York's American Museum of Natural History. According to a Casper Tribune-Herald report of 5 March 1950, this study confirmed that Pedro was not a fake but did indeed contain a complete if minuscule skeleton, a fully-fused skull (seemingly verifying that it was an adult humanoid, not an infant), plus a full set of teeth. Some accounts have even claimed that Shapiro opined that Pedro had been approximately 65 years old upon death; others, conversely, alleged that he had identified it as an infant - yet another source of controversy regarding Pedro.

In that same newspaper report, Goodman himself was quoted as stating: "After an exhaustive study by the scientists it was agreed that it was the only specimen known of a human race of that type which perhaps dated back a million years". However, such a dramatic claim as this seems unlikely to have been made by the scientists, so it may well have originated from the canny Goodman instead - possibly as an additional means of publicising his car business. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing for sure, because Goodman died later that same year.

Side view of Pedro (public domain)

Just before his death, Goodman loaned Pedro to Leonard Wadler, a New York businessman, for study purposes. However, it was never returned to Goodman's family, and Wadler moved to Florida soon afterwards, allegedly dying there during the 1980s. But what happened to Pedro? No-one knows, because no-one has been able to trace Wadler's precise movements and whereabouts once he had acquired Pedro. One report claimed that Wadler's family was contacted by (unnamed) investigators some time after his death enquiring where Pedro may now be, but that they had no idea either.

In a bid to rectify this regrettable situation, John Adolfi from Syracuse, New York, owner of the Bibleland Studios website, publicly announced on 3 February 2005 via a Casper Star-Tribune report by Brendan Burke that he would pay $10,000 for Pedro, if it still existed. He would then submit Pedro for DNA analyses, more x-ray studies, and magnetic resonance imaging in order to determine once and for all its precise identity. So far, however, Adolfi's reward remains unclaimed.

Reward poster for Pedro, issued by John Adolfi of Bibleland Studios (© John Adolfi/Bibleland Studios – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only)

Incidentally, back on 13 November 1936 one of Pedro's original discoverers, Cecil Main, had signed an official affidavit containing what he claimed to be the true facts behind their notable find, and which was sworn in Scotts Bluff County, Nebraska, and officially recorded in Hot Springs County, Wyoming, on 16 August 1943. Oddly, however, this document contains what would appear to be some glaring inconsistencies with other versions of events.

In it, Main stated that Pedro had been discovered by them in June 1934. Conversely, as already noted in this present ShukerNature article, a report documenting that event had allegedly been published in the Casper Tribune-Herald on 21 October 1932, followed by additional articles published by this same newspaper in that same year, at least according to Brendan Burke's above-mentioned Casper Star-Tribune report from 2005. Here is what Burke wrote in it:

Mayne was prospecting for gold near Pathfinder Reservoir when an explosion he detonated revealed a small cave, according to a Oct. 21, 1932, article in the Casper Tribune-Herald. Inside the cave Mayne found the mummified remains of what looked like a tiny human.

Debate about the mummy's nature started soon after it was found. Some said it was a hoax. Others said it was the mummified remains of a baby. And others said it was one of the little people spoken about in Indian legends, according to Casper Tribune-Herald stories from 1932.

So if these supposed Casper Tribune-Herald reports from 1932 do indeed exist, then Main's claimed date of June 1934 was clearly incorrect. Main also alleged in his affidavit of November 1936 that Pedro was "now owned by Homer F. Sherill, and located in the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois". Yet once again, contemporary reports claim that Main had actually sold Pedro to Sherill in April 1934 (i.e. two months before it had even been discovered, according to the discovery date given in Main's affidavit). Moreover, as noted by Rebecca Hein in an undated online article concerning Pedro accessible within the WyoHistory website:

Archivist Armand Esai notes that the Field Museum has no record of the mummy's presence during that time. The item still could have been there on loan or for identification, but because it was not part of the museum's official collection, the mummy was not listed in the records.

As seen, the discrepancies between different accounts as to whether Shapiro had (or had not) claimed that Pedro exhibited certain adult characteristics are by no means the only contentious, contradictory aspects of Pedro's post-discovery history.

Pedro inside his glass dome, with ruler to show size (public domain)

Fortunately, at least Pedro's original x-ray plates are still on file and thus confirmed, as are some vintage photographs of it, including those presented here. Moreover, not long after Pedro's initial discovery by the two prospectors, a Mexican shepherd called José Martinez reputedly found another mummy and six separate skulls on a ranch in the same vicinity. After soon suffering a number of mishaps, however, Martinez considered them to be jinxed, so he swiftly replaced them where he had found them.

Other mini-mummies have also been reported over the years from elsewhere in the U.S.A. One of the most noteworthy of these was a 3-ft-tall, red-haired specimen discovered on a ledge in Kentucky's famous Mammoth Cave, and exhibited widely during the 1920s, which seemed to be only a few centuries old (later radiocarbon-dating studies, however, revealed that it was 3,000-4,000 years old). During 1922, sheep-herder Bill Street claimed to have found several small skulls and whole mummies in Montana's Beartooth Mountains, but their present whereabouts are unclear. Two young men on a day off from the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933 came upon a dead pygmy with sharp teeth in Wyoming's Wind River Mountains, but both died soon afterwards, and others who saw it allegedly died from severe illnesses.

In 1969, author John 'Ace' Bonar visited orthopaedic specialist Richard Phelps in Casper to see the preserved head of a mysterious tiny humanoid that he was displaying at that time in his shop. Bonar learnt that the head had originally been taken from a cliff near Wyoming's Muddy Gap. After Phelps's death in 1980, his daughter donated the preserved pygmy head to the University of Wyoming in Laramie, where it is still said to be today.

According to Bonar, the husband of Winnie Cardell from Alcova, Wyoming, also owned a mini-mummy - until he loaned it to a college professor, who never returned it. A specimen closely resembling Pedro, meanwhile, attracted media attention in January 1979 when it was loaned to Californian antique appraiser Kent Diehl of San Anselmo for examination. Just under 1 ft long, with an indentation at the back of the head indicating brain injury as the cause of death, the mummy was supposedly found in Central America during 1919, but Diehl would not publicly identify the family from Marin, California, that presently owns it.

This anterosuperior view of the head of an anencephalic human foetus demonstrates the disorganised connective tissue membrane that covers the top of the skull in the absence of the calvarium or skullcap (public domain)

Some researchers consider Pedro to have been a grossly-malformed human child or foetus - possibly with anencephaly, a teratological condition in which the brain has not developed fully (if at all) during foetal maturation. This latter identity was proposed for Pedro by anthropologist Prof. George W. Gill from the University of Wyoming after examining photos of it first shown to him by his students in 1971. Moreover, in 1994, after appearing with Eugene Bashor on an episode of the TV show Unsolved Mysteries hosted by Robert Stack and dealing with Pedro, Gill was contacted by a rancher from Cheyenne (Wyoming's capital) claiming to own a mini-mummy. This one proved to be a tiny blond-haired girl, only 4 in high, and dubbed Chiquita, which one of the rancher's (great-)grandfathers (reports differ) had purchased from a sheep-herder in or around 1929 and which had been kept ever since inside a trunk in his home's attic.

When Gill examined Chiquita and DNA analyses were conducted upon it, assisted by the Denver Children's Hospital, he found that it was indeed an anencephalic Native American infant (examination of a femur removed from this mini-mummy had revealed that its distal ends had not closed, a sign of infancy). In their book Mountain Spirit: The Sheep Eater Indians of Yellowstone (2006), Lawrence L. Loendorf and Nancy M. Stone stated that radiocarbon dating tests had indicated that it was around 500 years old.

With regard to Pedro, conversely, if its adult characteristics allegedly revealed by Shapiro during his 1950 study were genuine, and not erroneous identifications (or erroneous claims made by the media), they would seem to contradict an anencephalic status for it. (Incidentally, one report read by me claiming that Gill had studied Pedro's x-rays directly after Shapiro had conducted his own 1950 study of them, and that it was Shapiro who had personally given the x-rays to Gill at that time, is clearly in error, because in 1950 Gill was still only a youth.)

One of Pedro's x-rays from 1950 (public domain)

Also, why was Pedro placed on the ledge and then sealed away inside that small room-like cavern within the Pedro Mountains? After all, this does seem not only a very purposeful but also a very strange and extreme action for anyone to take with merely a malformed infant. And who placed it there anyway?

As documented in my 2009 two-part ShukerNature article on littlefeet, there are many Amerindian traditions of mysterious races of dwarves or pygmies. And some of these allegedly kill their own kind when they become old or infirm by beheading them, or by smashing their skulls - in precisely the way that Pedro and its Central American lookalike may have met their deaths. Just a coincidence?

Artistic representation of a North American littlefoot (© Tim Morris)

The story of Pedro the Wyoming mini-mummy is undoubtedly one of the most muddled, contradictory histories that I have ever investigated, so much so that I seriously doubt at this late stage in the proceedings, over 80 years since its discovery by Main and Carr, whether an entirely accurate course of events concerning this very enigmatic little entity will ever be pieced together.

Meanwhile, documenting Pedro in his book Stranger Than Science (1959), veteran mysteries investigator Frank Edwards made the following pertinent comment:

Scientists from far and near have examined this tiny fellow and have gone away amazed. He is unlike anything they ever saw before. Sitting there on the shelf in Casper, visible, disturbing evidence that science may have overlooked him and his kind much too long.

Moreover, just as there are two sides to every coin, in his own book The Monster Trap (1976) Peter Haining offered an equally disturbing, obverse view:

For as some of the more serious-minded of the old people of Casper who were alive at the time of the discovery will tell you, they believe the little man was one of a whole race of barbaric dwarf people who once lived in the region in ancient times. And they get the distinct impression from looking at him that he had been sitting there behind the stone wall for thousands of years waiting for someone - or something - to return.

Now just suppose, they go on with the merest hesitation, that the long-awaited return of what-ever-it-might-be has taken place - and it has found nothing there...

Seemingly not for thousands of years, but still a chilling little vignette, to say the least. And who knows - perhaps it really would have been best in this instance to have let sleeping dogs lie, or dormant dwarves dream on?

If anyone owns (or can obtain) copies of any of the Casper Tribune-Herald newspaper reports that were allegedly published in 1932 (and hence almost two years before the date of Pedro's discovery as claimed in Cecil Main's affidavit), I would love to see them! Thanks very much.

NB – As far as I aware, all illustrations included in this article are in the public domain (unless stated otherwise), including the x-rays (according to Wikipedia's entry for Pedro, they are in the public domain for the following reason: "Copyright expired because the work was published without a copyright notice and/or without the necessary copyright registration."), but in any case I am including all of them here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only.

Casper historian Bob David holding Pedro in a pre-1950 photograph (public domain)

NORTH AMERICA'S ELUSIVE BABYFEET – Part 2.

Reward poster for Pedro, the missing Wyoming mini-mummy

Herewith the second part of my survey of North America’s mysterious babyfeet and other littlefeet (click here for Part 1). If anyone out there has details of further examples, or additional information regarding any of those documented here (especially news regarding the Wyoming mini-mummy’s current whereabouts), I’d be very interested in receiving them.

THE GEOW-LUD-MO-SIS-EG OF NEW BRUNSWICK

Proving that Little People are not a Northwest idiosyncrasy, however, Amerindian traditions regarding such entities are also on file from the Northeast, notably New York State. Here, as revealed in Edmond Wilson's book Apologies to the Iroquois, at least two tribes of dwarves supposedly lived among the Tuscaroras. One of these tribes possessed extraordinary powers of healing and would sometimes treat injured or ailing Iroquois in exchange for gifts of tobacco, but the other tribe preferred to play tricks instead, unless appeased with tobacco.

Much further south, within Louisiana's Mississippi Delta, reports have periodically emerged concerning a race of 'little red men', according to Peter Haining, writing in Ancient Mysteries (1977). About the size of ten-year-old children, they allegedly inhabit the secluded depths of the bayous, where they are as adept at climbing trees as monkeys.

And even further south, in New Mexico, there is an ancient Cochiti legend telling of how the Pueblo tribe of the Stone Lions was attacked by a fierce race of pygmies. Full details are preserved in the 29th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1907-1908).

Nor are mystery mini-humanoids confined exclusively to the United States within the North American continent. Moving northwards across the 49th Parallel, southeastern Canada can also lay claim to a version - the Geow-lud-mo-sis-eg. These entities are commonly met with in the vicinity of water, such as marshy ground, riverbanks, brooksides, or lake shores. Fond of playing tricks on humans, they display a particular delight in finely braiding (with consummate skill) strands of hair on the tails of horses, cows, and other domestic animals.

Their lore has been extensively researched by writer Pat Paul, of the Maliseet Nation, who lives on the Tobique Indian Reserve in New Brunswick. Once frequently spied, nowadays the Geow-lud-mo-sis-eg are rarely reported, but they do not appear to have entirely vanished.

Several years ago, one of the Tobique elders and his wife looked out of their home's window one night during a heavy downpour of rain and saw three of these dwarves sitting around an outdoor fireplace. In keeping with the ancient lore concerning these strange beings, the fire burning in this open-air fireplace remained fully lit and blazing, in spite of the torrential rain pouring down upon it. Moreover, minute stone beads supposedly manufactured by the Geow-lud-mo-sis-eg have been found at the Passammaquoddy Nation (Sebayik) Reservation in Maine. Measuring 0.04-1 inch long, each of these beads is composed of a shale-like material, and contains a hole enabling the thread to pass through.

Far more remarkable, however, but tragically lost (or at least mislaid) are the pygmy coffins and corpses found on an unidentified island by Captain Luke Foxe during the early 1630s while exploring the Hudson Bay/Baffin Island region of northeastern Canada. In 1635, Foxe recorded his extraordinary find in his journal as follows:

"The newes from the land was that this Iland was a Sepulchre, for that the Salvages [sic] had laid their dead (I cannot say interred), for it is all stone, as they cannot dig therein, but lay the Corpes upon the stones, and well them about with the same, coffining them also by laying the sides of old sleddes above, which have been artificially made. The boards are some 9 or 10 ft long, 4 inches thicke. In what manner the tree they have bin made out of was cloven or sawen, it was so smooth as we could not discerne, the burials had been so old. And, as in other places of those countries, they bury all their Vtensels [utensils], as bowes, arrowes, strings, darts, lances, and other implements carved in bone. The longest Corpes was not above 4 foot long, with their heads laid to the West...their Corpes were wrapped in Deare [deer] skinnes...They seem to be people of small stature."

Although Foxe's sailors took away the wooden boards to be used as firewood, they did not disturb the pygmy corpses, but the island in question has never been satisfactorily identified, thereby ruling out the possibility of launching any modern search for further relics here.

WYOMING'S MINI-MUMMY

Iromically, the most contentious North American mini-humanoid on record is one that was actually formally examined by scientists. Yet it still remains mystifying, with a history full of contradictory claims.

This specimen's extraordinary history began one day in October 1932 (or June 1934 in some accounts), when gold-prospectors Cecil Main (spelt 'Mayne' in some reports) and Frank Carr blasted a hole through the wall of a ravine in the San Pedro Mountains, about 65 miles southwest of the city of Casper, Wyoming - and made a momentous discovery. The wall had been hiding a small, room-like, hitherto-sealed cavern, which contained a ledge. And sitting on the ledge, in cross-legged pixie-like pose, with its arms folded across its chest, was the mummy of a diminutive humanoid figure, with a sitting height of less than 7 in and a total height of only 14 in.

Sporting a tanned if wrinkled bronze-coloured skin, barrel-shaped body, large hands, long fingers, low brow, very wide mouth with large lips, and broad flat nose, this strange figure resembled a smirking old man, who seemed almost to be winking at its two amazed discoverers, as one of its large eyes was half-closed. Nevertheless, it was evident that this entity had been dead for a very long time, and its death did not appear to have been a pleasant one. Its head was abnormally flat, and was covered with a dark gelatinous substance - later examinations by scientists suggested that its skull may have been smashed by an extremely heavy blow, and the gelatinous substance was congealed blood and exposed brain tissue. Due to its mountain provenance, this remarkable specimen was soon dubbed Pedro by the media, following its discovery's announcement in a report by the Casper Tribune-Herald newspaper on 21 October 1932.

To cut a long and highly controversial (not to mention often contradictory) story short, Pedro became the property of used car-dealer Ivan Goodman from Casper, who purchased it during the mid-1940s from Floyd Jones, a drug store owner in the small Wyoming town of Meeteetse, where it had been on display for some years. In 1950, Goodwin made Pedro available for scientific examination, the most detailed of which, including x-ray analysis, was conducted by anthropologist Dr Henry Shapiro from the American Museum of Natural History. According to a subsequent Casper Tribune-Herald report, the examination had revealed that Pedro was not a fake but did indeed contain a complete if minuscule skeleton, a fully-fused skull (seemingly verifying that it was an adult humanoid, and not an infant - not even an anencephalous one), and also a full set of teeth. Certain other reports, conversely, allege that Shapiro had identified it as an infant.

Pedro's current whereabouts are unknown; it was last recorded in 1950. That was the year in which Goodman loaned it to a New York businessman, Leonard Wadler, who wanted to study it, but it was not returned to Goodman's family after Goodman died later that same year. Soon afterwards, Wadler moved to Florida, where he apparently died sometime during the 1980s but his movements and precise whereabouts during the intervening three decades are presently undetermined. As for Pedro: was it subsequently lost or even destroyed after being acquired by Wadler, or does someone, somewhere, still own it? No-one seems to know. Even a $10,000 reward for Pedro's discovery offered in February 2005 by Bibleland Studios founder John Adolfi has so far failed to uncover it, but its x-ray plates from 1950 are still on file, as are several vintage photos of it. Moreover, not long after Pedro's initial discovery by the two prospectors, a Mexican shepherd called Jose Martinez reputedly found another mummy and six separate skulls on a ranch in the same vicinity. After soon suffering a number of mishaps, however, he considered them to be jinxed, so he swiftly replaced them where he had found them.

Other mini-mummies have also been reported over the years from elsewhere in the U.S.A. One of the most noteworthy of these was a 3-ft-tall, red-haired specimen discovered during the 1920s on a ledge in Kentucky's famous Mammoth Cave, and which seemed to be only a few centuries old. During 1922, sheep-herder Bill Street claimed to have found several small skulls and whole mummies in Montana's Beartooth Mountains, but their present whereabouts are unclear. Two young men on a day off from the Civilian Conservation Corps came upon a dead pygmy with sharp teeth in Wyoming's Wind River Mountains during 1933 (was it a Ninnimbe?); both died soon afterwards, and others who saw it died from severe illnesses.

In 1969, author John 'Ace' Bonar visited orthopaedic specialist Richard Phelps in Casper to see the preserved head of a mysterious tiny humanoid that he was displaying at that time in his shop. Bonar learnt that the head had originally been taken from a cliff near Wyoming's Muddy Gap. After Phelps's death in 1980, his daughter donated the preserved pygmy head to the University of Wyoming in Laramie, where it is still said to be today.

According to Bonar, the husband of Winnie Cardell from Alcova, Wyoming, also owned a mini-mummy - until he loaned it to a college professor, who never returned it. A specimen closely resembling the famous Casper mini-mummy attracted media attention in January 1979 when it was loaned to Californian antique appraiser Kent Diehl of San Anselmo for examination. Just under 1 ft long, with an indentation at the back of the head indicating brain injury as the cause of death, the mummy was supposedly found in Central America during 1919, but Diehl would not publicly identify the Marin family that presently owns it.

Some researchers have dismissed Pedro as a grossly-malformed human child or foetus (anencephaly being a popular explanation, as proposed during the 1990s on an Unsolved Mysteries TV show by University of Wyoming anthropologist Dr George Gill after viewing photos of Pedro and its x-rays), but if its alleged adult characteristics are genuine, they would conflict with this identity. And anyway, why was it placed on the ledge and then sealed away inside that small cavern within the Pedro Mountains, and by whom? After all, this seems a very strange, extreme action to take with merely a malformed infant. Also, there are many Amerindian traditions of mysterious races of dwarves or pygmies, as we have seen, and some of these allegedly kill their own kind when they become old or infirm by beheading them, or by smashing their skulls - in precisely the way that Pedro and its Central American lookalike may have met their deaths. Just a coincidence?

DOVER DEMON

Sceptics claim that North American mystery dwarves, pygmies, and other littlefeet exist only in native American folklore and legends, and that white Westerners never report such beings. In reality, however, this is far from true, as exemplified by the Dover demon.

At around 10.30 pm on 21 April 1977, 17-year-old Bill Bartlett was driving home with two friends through Dover in Massachusetts when his headlights illuminated a bizarre entity picking its way along a stone wall at the side of the road. Standing 3-4 ft high with hairless but rough-textured, peach-coloured skin, the creature had a disproportionately large melon-shaped head whose face was wholly featureless except for a big pair of protruding eyes that glowed orange. Its body was slight, but its arms and legs were very long and thin, terminating in slender, supple fingers and toes. Bill Bartlett later produced a sketch of this entity, which became known as the Dover demon - a sketch that was almost identical to the drawing prepared independently by a separate eyewitness, 15-year-old John Baxter, who had seen the being less than two hours after Bartlett's encounter.

Baxter had been walking home close to the location of Bartlett's sighting when he spied the 'demon', and chased it down a gully. Two other sightings were made within the next 24 hours, after which it was never reported again. On account of its truly unearthly appearance, wholly unlike any type of creature known to science, some researchers have deemed the Dover demon to be an extraterrestrial, or, at the very least, an interdimensional, visitor. All of which makes it all the more intriguing that like so many other littlefeet on record, this mystifying entity does have a traditional, terrestrial precedent.

The Cree Nation of eastern Canada speak of a mysterious, elusive race of pygmies known to them as the Mannegishi, which live between rocks in the rapids. Their morphological description corresponds almost exactly with that of the Dover demon.

So what are we to make of North America's littlefeet? Quite evidently, they are more than just a myth, and have been in existence here for a very long time. But what are they, and where did they originally come from?

Are they native New Worlders that have retreated in historic times to remote localities away from modern humanity's conquering reach? Interestingly, in his absorbing book on the huge extinct ape Gigantopithecus, entitled Other Origins: The Search For the Giant Ape in Human Prehistory (1990), American anthropologist Dr Russell Ciochon briefly referred to a native American tradition concerning a tiny human entity referred to as the ‘little cat man’, and he speculated that this may refer to an extinct North American prosimian.

Or could the littlefeet actually constitute beings from a very different, parallel world that can and do enter ours at will, in the best traditions of Little People everywhere? And where, in the infinitely subtle continuum of reports, do Little People end and extraterrestrials begin, anyway? After all, entities like the Dover demon and other littlefeet documented here effortlessly if confusingly embrace both ends of this vast spectrum of sightings instantaneously.

Documenting the Wyoming mini-mummy in his book Stranger Than Science (1959), veteran mysteries investigator Frank Edwards made the following pertinent comment:

"Scientists from far and near have examined this tiny fellow and have gone away amazed. He is unlike anything they ever saw before. Sitting there on the shelf in Casper, visible, disturbing evidence that science may have overlooked him and his kind much too long."

Moreover, just as there are two sides to every coin, in his own book The Monster Trap (1976) Peter Haining offered an equally disturbing, obverse view:

"For as some of the more serious-minded of the old people of Casper who were alive at the time of the discovery will tell you, they believe the little man was one of a whole race of barbaric dwarf people who once lived in the region in ancient times. And they get the distinct impression from looking at him that he had been sitting there behind the stone wall for thousands of years waiting for someone - or something - to return.

"Now just suppose, they go on with the merest hesitation, that the long-awaited return of what-ever-it-might-be has taken place - and it has found nothing there..."

A chilling little vignette, to say the least. And who knows - perhaps it really would have been best in this instance to have let sleeping dogs lie, or dormant dwarves dream on?