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)

ANTLERED ELEPHANTS - OR UNLIKELY UINTATHERES?

'Antlered elephants' and other North American prehistoric fauna from the Eocene epoch in what is today Wyoming, USA, as depicted in William D. Gunning's book Life History of Our Planet (1881) (public domain)

Have there ever been antlered elephants? Not as far as we know – so how can the extraordinary illustration presented above be explained? The answer dates back to the intense rivalry between two eminent American fossil collectors, resulting in the so-called Bone Wars that galvanised 19^th-Century palaeontology, and focuses upon the subject of one of their most fervent bouts of competitive taxonomic classification – a long-extinct but spectacularly strange-looking group of huge ungulate mammals known as uintatheres.

Uintatheres have always held a special place in my childhood memories because the very first artistic reconstruction of a fossil mammal's likely appearance in life that I ever saw was of a Uintatherium – vibrantly depicted on one of the opening pages of my How and Why Wonder Book of Wild Animals (1962) that my mother bought for me when I was about 4 years old during the early 1960s. I read that poor, long-suffering book so many times and with such youthful enthusiasm that it eventually fell apart, but a replacement copy was soon purchased, which I still own today, so here is that wonderful, fondly-remembered illustration:

Uintatherium depicted by Walter Ferguson in The How and Why Wonder Book of Wild Animals (© Walter Ferguson/Transworld Publishers / inclusion here strictly on Fair Use/non-commercial basis only)

But what are – or were – uintatheres? Named after the mountainous Uinta region of Wyoming and Utah where their first scientifically-recorded fossils were uncovered, they belonged to the taxonomic order Dinocerata ('terrible horns'). This was an early group of extremely large, superficially rhinoceros-like ungulates (but possessing claws rather than hooves), which existed from the late Palaeocene to the mid-Eocene, approximately 45 million years ago. The males of its most famous, culminating members, the uintatheres (which existed during the mid-Eocene), bore no less than three separate pairs of blunt ossicone-like horns on their heads. These consisted of a rear pair arising from the parietal bones near the back of the skull, a middle pair arising from the maxillae or upper jaw bones, and a front pair arising from the nasal bones. Their function remains uncertain, but they may have been used for defence and/or for sexual display purposes. Also, their skull was very concave and flat in shape, and with very thick walls, thus yielding so restricted a cranial cavity that the brain was surprisingly small for such sizeable animals.

Today, two major genera of uintatheres are recognised – Uintatherium and Eobasileus (plus a few less well known ones, such as Tetheopsis) – which are very similar to one another morphologically, and are distinguished predominantly by way of certain differences in skull proportions, as delineated in the following diagram and table. These originate from the definitive work on uintathere taxonomy, North Carolina University palaeontologist Dr Walter H. Wheeler's comprehensive paper 'Revision of the Uintatheres', published in 1961 as Bulletin #14 of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University.

Skull proportions in uintathere genera (from Wheeler, 1961)

Also, whereas the skull of Uintatherium was relatively broad, with the parietal bones positioned some way in front of the occiput (the skull's rearmost portion), in Eobasileus the skull was long and narrow, with the parietal horns further back and therefore much closer to the occiput.

In addition to their horns, male uintatheres also possessed a very sizeable pair of downward-curving upper tusks (they were much smaller in females), protected like scimitars by bony scabbard-resembling lower jaw down-growths. Behind each of these two tusks was a noticeable gap (diastema), separating the tusk on each side of the upper jaw from that side's first premolars. In Uintatherium, the maxillary horns were positioned directly above the diastema in each side of the upper jaw, whereas in Eobasileus they were positioned further back, above the premolars.

Comparing the structure of a Uintatherium anceps skull at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France (above) with that of an Eobasileus cornutus skull at the Chicago Field Museum (below) (public domain / © Dallas Krentzel/Wikipedia)

Uintatherium was a massive browsing ungulate, up to around 13 ft long, 5.5 ft tall, and up to 2 tons in weight. Only two species of Uintatherium are recognised today – North America's U. anceps (the most famous dinoceratan of all, formally named and described in 1872 by American palaeontologist Prof. Joseph Leidy), and China's more recently-recognised U. insperatus (named and described in 1981).

Only one Eobasileus species is nowadays recognised – E. cornutus, named by fellow American palaeontologist Prof. Edward Drinker Cope in 1872. This was the largest uintathere of all, and in fact the largest land mammal of any kind during its time on Earth, with a total length of around 13 ft, standing 6.75 ft high at the shoulder, and weighing up to 4.5 tons.

Eobasileus as depicted masterfully and majestically by Charles Knight (public domain)

Just over a century ago, however, a bewildering plethora of uintathere genera and species had been distinguished and named, due not so much to any taxonomic merit, however, but rather to the driven desire by two implacable fossil-collecting foes during the 1870s and 1880s to outdo one another in their febrile quest for palaeontological immortality and to destroy each other's scientific reputation, until their obsession eventually ruined both of them, socially and financially.

Their names? Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-1899), and Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897).

Othniel Charles Marsh (left) and Edward Drinker Cope (right) (public domain)

After having been professor of vertebrate palaeontology at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, Marsh became the first curator at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University (the museum having been founded by his wealthy uncle, the philanthropist George Peabody). Conversely, Cope preferred field work to academic research, as a result of which he never held a major scientific post of any lengthy tenure, though he did become professor of zoology for a time at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, his home city.

Although they are most famous for their frenzied attempts to best one another in the description of new dinosaur species, Marsh and Cope also constantly challenged each another along similar lines in relation to their descriptions of new uintatheres. The regrettable, chaotic result was the creation not only of numerous new species but also of many new genera, several of which were named within the space of a single year, and all of which were unjustified, having been founded upon the most trivial, taxonomically insignificant of differences.

This sorry, farcical state of affairs is preserved today in the startling array of junior synonyms attached to the genus Uintatherium, including the nowadays long-nullified genera Dinoceras (coined by Marsh in 1872), Ditetrodon (Cope, 1885), Elachoceras (Scott, 1886), Loxolophodon (Cope, 1872), Octotomus (Cope, 1885), Tinoceras (Marsh, 1872), and Uintamastix (Leidy, 1872). Although I normally have little interest in abandoned names, I do feel a pang of regret for the loss of one particular example here – the wonderfully-named Dinoceras mirabile (synonymised with Uintatherium anceps), which was coined in 1872 by Marsh, and translates as 'marvellous terrible-horn' – a very evocative, accurate description of how this extraordinary beast would have looked in life.

Uintatherium as portrayed upon a postage stamp issued by Afghanistan in 1988, from my personal collection (© Afghanistan postal service / inclusion here strictly on Fair Use/non-commercial basis only)

But what has all (or any) of this to do with antlered elephants? I'm glad you asked! Because uintatheres were indeed so astounding in form, when their first fossils were discovered palaeontologists were by no means certain which creatures were their closest relatives, and how, therefore, they should be classified. Cope, who was particularly enthralled by them, was convinced that such huge ungulates must surely be related to elephants, and he even opined that they probably possessed a long nasal trunk like elephants plus a pair of very large, wide, elephantine ears, and that they should be housed with them in the taxonomic order Proboscidea, thereby conflicting yet again with Marsh's view (in 1872, Marsh had placed them within their very own order, Dinocerata). But that was not all.

Cope also speculated that their rearmost, parietal pair of horns may have been much larger than the other two pairs, possibly even branched and covered in velvet, thereby resembling the antlers of deer. And so, in various early reconstructions of their putative appearance in life, this is exactly how uintatheres were portrayed – as antlered, large-eared, trunk-wielding pachyderms, resembling the highly unlikely outcome of an equally improbable liaison between an elephant and a moose!

Eobasileus cornutus with elephant ears and trunk , from an August 1873 Pennsylvania Monthly article by Edward Drinker Cope (public domain)

True, there were certain less dramatic versions – one illustration (see above) that appeared in a Pennsylvania Monthly article from August 1873 by Cope concerning the uintathere species now called Eobasileus cornutus portrayed it with tall unbranched parietal horns rather than with parietal antlers (although they are still slightly palmate at their distal edges), but did gift it with an elephant's ears and trunk (as instructed by Cope). However, the two most (in)famous examples of this specific genre of reconstruction were rather more extreme, and both of them appeared in William D. Gunning's book Life History of Our Planet (1881). One of these is the following diagrammatic reconstruction:

Line diagram of a Uintatherium (spelt 'Uintahtherium' here) as an antlered elephant-like beast in Gunning's book (public domain)

Gunning's comparisons drawn between this remarkable creature and various modern-day animals were equally memorable, albeit decidedly fanciful in parts (notably its small brain allying it with the marsupials!):

"We are as astronomers taking the parallax of a distant star. The animal which roamed along the banks of that Wyoming lake is as far from us in time as the star in space. What is its parallax? what its place in the scheme of creation? The long, narrow head with skull elevated behind into a great crest, the molar teeth and arch of the cheek-bone are characters, which indicate relationship with the Rhinoceros. The absence of teeth in the premaxillaries points to the Ruminants. The vertical motion of the jaw points away from the Ruminants, towards the Carnivores. The great expansion of the pelvis, the complete radius and ulna, the shoulder-blade and the hind-foot, are characters which affiliate our animal with the Elephant. The diminutive brain would place it with the pouched Opossum.

"The horns on the maxillaries, the concavity of the crown, and the enormous side crests of the cranium are characters which remove the animal from all living types. We have found the ruins of an animal composed of Elephant, Rhinoceros, Ruminant, Marsu­pial, and a something unknown to the world of the living. Drawing an outline around the skeleton, we have a long head with little horns on the nose, conical horns over the eyes, and palmate horns over the ears, with pillar-like limbs supporting a massive body nearly eight feet high in the withers and six in the rump. Eliminating from its structure all that relates to the living, so many and such dominant structures remain that we cannot choose for it a name from existing orders. We will call it Uintahtherium [sic], which means, the Beast of the Uintah Mountains."

A pair of antlered elephantine uintatheres appeared in this same book's frontispiece illustration, but this time fleshed out rather than in diagrammatic form, as part of an Eocene panorama of North American mammals. The illustration in question opens this present ShukerNature post, and is also reproduced below, together with its original accompanying caption:

The frontispiece illustration of Gunning's book, featuring a pair of antlered uintatheres (public domain)

By the end of the 19^th Century, however, with many additional fossilised remains having been discovered in the meantime, palaeontological views regarding both the morphology and the taxonomy of the uintatheres had changed markedly. Cope's views concerniing them had been totally rejected in favour of Marsh's, thus promoting the belief still current today that these mammalian behemoths represented a lost ungulate lineage, unrepresented by (and unrelated to) any that are still alive in the modern world.

A rather more modern-looking Uintatherium as illustrated in the Reverend H.N. Hutchinson's book Extinct Monsters (1897)

So it was, for instance, that Uintatherium was illustrated in Extinct Monsters (1897) by the Reverend H.N. Hutchinson in much the same manner as it still is now, over a century later, shorn of its velvet-surfaced antlers and with only relatively short and blunt, unbranched horns in their stead, plus much smaller ears, and a conspicuous lack of any probiscidean trunk. The antlered elephant was no more – a most unlikely uintathere had soon become a non-existent fossil phantom blown swiftly away by a brisk, incoming breeze bearing new discoveries and new ideas borne from a new generation of researchers. 'Twas ever thus.

My How and Why Wonder Book of Wild Animals (1962), containing the first Uintatherium illustration that I ever saw as a child (© Transworld Publishers / inclusion here strictly on Fair Use/non-commercial basis only)