Dr KARL SHUKER

Zoologist, media consultant, and science writer, Dr Karl Shuker is also one of the best known cryptozoologists in the world. He is the author of such seminal works as Mystery Cats of the World (1989), The Lost Ark: New and Rediscovered Animals of the 20th Century (1993; greatly expanded in 2012 as The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals), Dragons: A Natural History (1995), In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995), The Unexplained (1996), From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings (1997), Mysteries of Planet Earth (1999), The Hidden Powers of Animals (2001), The Beasts That Hide From Man (2003), Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007), Dr Shuker's Casebook (2008), Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo: From the Pages of Fortean Times (2010), Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery (2012), Mirabilis: A Carnival of Cryptozoology and Unnatural History (2013), Dragons in Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture (2013), The Menagerie of Marvels (2014), A Manifestation of Monsters (2015), Here's Nessie! (2016), and what is widely considered to be his cryptozoological magnum opus, Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors (2016) - plus, very excitingly, his four long-awaited, much-requested ShukerNature blog books (2019-2024).

Dr Karl Shuker's Official Website - http://www.karlshuker.com/index.htm

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Showing posts with label thunderbird. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thunderbird. Show all posts

Sunday, 3 January 2021

ELUCIDATING THE TWO 'CIVIL WAR PTERODACTYL' THUNDERBIRD PHOTOGRAPHS

 
The two so-called Civil War Pterodactyl thunderbird photographs: the PTP photo (top) and the AP photo (bottom) (both photos © FreakyLinks/Haxan Films/Regency Television/20th Century Fox Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Over the years, I have documented on ShukerNature a number of alleged thunderbird photographs (some of them even being claimed on various online sites to be THE infamous, missing thunderbird photograph – click here for the latter's fascinating if highly frustrating history), and I have exposed each one of them either as an intentionally deceiving hoax perpetrated by creator(s) unknown, or as a pastiche deliberately intended as a tribute to the missing thunderbird photo that has been openly and unequivocally identified as a pastiche by its creator(s). Click here, here, here, and here to access these cases. Yet the photographs from this particular cryptozoological category that have elicited the most queries sent to me by readers, and continue to do so, are the two that form the subject of this first ShukerNature blog article of mine in 2021 – namely, the so-called Civil War Pterodactyl thunderbird photos.

Before I go any further, however, I must point out that their full details were first revealed online elsewhere (see later for a clickable link to that source). Consequently, this present concise article of mine is intended merely as a summary, an elucidation, for anyone who has not seen that very comprehensive original coverage and is therefore checking ShukerNature for information concerning them instead.

First and foremost, setting the scene: as my article's title and opening illustrations clearly demonstrate, there is not just one Civil War Pterodactyl thunderbird photograph (as is sometimes mistakenly assumed), but two. Although superficially similar, each depicting a group of men in American Civil War uniforms standing around a large seemingly-killed pterodactyl-like mystery beast lying on the ground, and therefore corresponding with some claimed recollections of the missing thunderbird photo (in turn explaining why they have been popularly dubbed the Civil War Pterodactyl thunderbird photos), a closer look readily shows that the two beasts are in fact quite different, as are the men.

Both photos look very old and tattered, their existence ostensibly indicating that at some stage during the American Civil War (1861-1865), a group of soldiers somehow managed to kill a living, modern-day pterodactyl, or something extraordinarily like one. As a result, the two images have variously appeared separately and together on many online sites and elsewhere as evidence that these winged reptiles did not become extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period approximately 65 million years ago as currently indicated by the fossil record, but have somehow survived into the present age, at least in North America.

In fact, the reality is very different. As will be seen, both Civil War Pterodactyl thunderbird photographs have the same origin, and are completely artificial, but were created for two very different, entirely separate purposes.

One of these photos is commonly dubbed the PTP Photo online, and sometimes even the PTP Pterodactyl Photo, although the latter is decidedly tautological, bearing in mind that PTP is short for Pterosaur Photo (and as pterodactyls constitute a major taxonomic group of pterosaurs, this means that if referred to in full it would be the Pterosaur Photo Pterodactyl Photo!). Here it is:

 
The PTP Photo (© FreakyLinks/Haxan Films/Regency Television/20th Century Fox Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The other photo does not seem to have a specific name. Consequently, for reasons that will shortly become obvious, I shall refer to it hereafter as the AP Photo, with AP being short for Advance Publicity. Here it is:

 
The AP Photo (© FreakyLinks/Haxan Films/Regency Television/20th Century Fox Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Originally screened from October 2000 until June 2001, FreakyLinks was a single-season, 13-episode science fiction TV show originating in the USA. It was created by American film producer Gregg Hale (best known for producing the movie The Blair Witch Project) and David S. Hoyer (an American film-maker, novelist, and comic book writer, with many superhero movie screenplays to his name, most notably those for the trilogy of Blade movies and the Dark Knight trilogy of Batman movies). The production companies responsible for bringing FreakyLinks to the small screen were Haxan Films, Regency Television, and 20th Century Fox Television

The focus of FreakyLinks is a mysteries-obsessed geek named Derek Barnes (played by Ethan Embry), who has a website entitled FreakyLinks through which he channels his investigations and findings relating to a wide range of unexplained phenomena, and he is assisted in his endeavours to uncover the truth by a couple of friends. Each episode deals with a different case investigated by them, and the subject of Episode 4, which is entitled 'Coelacanth This!', is a series of recent attacks upon people by some huge winged mystery beast. Derek believes that this may be a living pterodactyl (i.e. a prehistoric survivor, hence the coelacanth reference in this episode's title) and, in turn, the origin of cryptozoological thunderbird reports dating back more than a century.

This is where the two Civil War Pterodactyl photos come in, because the PTP Photo had been created specifically (and digitally) by a VFX company hired by the production design team at FreakyLinks to appear (as indeed it did) in 'Coelacanth This!', which was first screened on 27 October 2000. At the time of my writing and uploading this blog article of mine onto ShukerNature, 'Coelacanth This!' can be watched for free here on YouTube, so you can readily confirm for yourself that the PTP Photo does indeed appear in this episode. Moreover, below are three screen shots of this photo's presence in it that reveal precisely when it first appears (it does so more than once in this episode – see the end of this present article for a screen shot of its reappearance).



 
Three screen shots of the PTP photo's first appearance in 'Coelacanth This!' – Episode 4 of FreakyLinks - please click each one to enlarge it for viewing pueposes FreakyLinks/Haxan Films/Regency Television/20th Century Fox Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The PTP photo should not be (but very often is) confused with an earlier, visually inferior Civil War pterodactyl photo. This latter picture is none other than the AP Photo, which features different actors as the Civil War soldiers, plus a different pterodactyl, in the form of a physical model. The AP Photo had also been created for FreakyLinks but, crucially, was used by them solely for advance publicity purposes, being included (together with a specially-created back story for it) in their FreakyLinks website (which in turn had been launched two years prior to the show's actual screening in order to promote it), but never actually appearing onscreen in the show itself.

Two decades later finds the FreakyLinks website now archived within the website of Haxan Films, but if you click here you can still access the page from it containing the AP Photo. Moreover, the pterodactyl model from the AP Photo is now housed at veteran cryptozoologist Loren Coleman's famous International Cryptozoology Museum at Portland, in Maine, USA.

 
Screen shot of the relevant section of the page from the original FreakyLinks website (now archived within the site of Haxan Films) that contains the AP photo - please click it to enlarge for reading purposes (© FreakyLinks/Haxan Films/Regency Television/20th Century Fox Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

But why do two different Civil War Pterodactyl photos associated with FreakyLinks exist? Why wasn't just one created, to appear both onscreen in the show itself and online in its publicity website? The reason is as follows.

The AP Photo was created first, but apparently there was subsequently a problem in obtaining talent releases for the actors featured in it, which would be needed if it were indeed to be shown onscreen in the episode. Also, the show's production designer allegedly didn't think that the AP Photo's pterodactyl was very impressive.

So Haxan Films hired the visual-effects company E=MC2 Digital to create a second, more spectacular Civil War Pterodactyl photo (which would then be shown in the episode), and signed up new actors to appear in it. The result was the PTP photo, with the pterodactyl in it being a digitally-added image this time, as far as I'm aware, rather than a physical model.

So, to reiterate the key fact here: it was the PTP photo that was used onscreen in the actual FreakyLinks episode, not the AP Photo, which appeared instead in the show's online publicity website.

All of this and more concerning the two different FreakyLinks Civil War Pterodactyl photos was first revealed by Brian Dunning in a fascinating Skeptoid podcast and accompanying online transcript of 9 January 2018 that finally and comprehensively dispelled the confusion that had hitherto enshrouded these two images for so long online. Consequently, I strongly recommend that you click here to listen to his podcast and/or read his transcript for full details concerning this now fully-resolved but still very interesting cryptozoological case. (A detailed analysis of the PTP photo within the context of putative living pterosaurs can also be accessed here.)

 
A screen shot showing the reappearance of the PTP Photo near the end of the 'Coelacanth This!' episode of FreakyLinksFreakyLinks/Haxan Films/Regency Television/20th Century Fox Television – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

Tuesday, 13 October 2020

EXPOSING A TRULY BATTY EXAMPLE OF A FAKE THUNDERBIRD PHOTOGRAPH

The fake thunderbird photograph exposed in this present ShukerNature article (photo-manipulator(s) unknown to me – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The case of the missing thunderbird photograph is unquestionably one of the most tantalizing – and tormenting – cryptozoological cases on file. I have already documented it in detail here on ShukerNature as well as in my two prehistoric survivors books, which should all be consulted for comprehensive coverage. However, serving to set the scene for this present article's subject, here is a concise quote from my afore-mentioned ShukerNature account of this elusive (or illusive?) image:

It all (allegedly) began back in 1886, when an Arizona newspaper called the Tombstone Epitaph supposedly published a very striking photograph, which depicted a huge dead pterodactyl-like bird with open beak and enormous outstretched wings, nailed to a barn and flanked by some men. This bird was reputed to be a thunderbird, and judging from the size scale provided by the height of the men standing alongside it, its wingspan appeared to be an awesome 36 ft! In other words, it was three times greater than that of the wandering albatross Diomedea exulans - the bird species currently holding the record for the world's biggest modern-day wingspan.

Since then, countless people claim to have seen this same photo in various magazines published some time during the 1960s or early 1970s, but no-one can remember precisely where. Those publications thought to be likely sources of such a picture include Saga, True, Argosy, and various of the many Western-type magazines in existence during this period in America, but searches through runs of these publications have failed to uncover any evidence of it.

Nor has anyone come forward with a copy of this photo as published elsewhere, and the archives of the Tombstone Epitaph do not have any copy of it either.

A number of photos claimed to be this evanescent, iconic image have been aired over the years, especially online, but these have all been exposed as hoaxes.

I should also point out here that some people have claimed that the ostensibly-vanished photo seen by them actually portrayed a bona fide pterodactyl, not merely a pterodactyl-like bird. However, just a few years after the thunderbird photo was supposedly first published, another story of a huge winged wonder began circulating, and in the same geographical region. This one concerned a huge bona fide pterodactyl having been shot in an American desert, i.e. a totally separate storyline but which has subsequently been conflated with the missing thunderbird photo's storyline, especially in online accounts. Consequently, this may explain those eyewitness reports of having seen a photo of a dead pterodactyl, rather than of a dead bird, pinned with wings outstretched to a barn door.

As will be seen if you search my ShukerNature blog, I have personally exposed a number of hoax thunderbird photos, because I feel that it is very necessary to remove from further consideration such fakes, as they serve only to confuse and detract from serious investigations being made by various researchers (myself included) regarding the original, genuine thunderbird photograph, if indeed such a picture really does exist. And now, yet another fake thunderbird photo has emerged, but one that I was able to expose very quickly, as now fully revealed here.

During the early hours of yesterday morning (12 October 2020), longstanding Facebook friend Randi MacDonald (aka Randi Mosasaur) brought to my attention via a private message on FB the following photograph that she had found on Pinterest, but with no details concerning its origin. I reproduced it at the opening of this present ShukerNature article of mine, but here it is again:

The fake thunderbird photograph found on Pinterest by Randi (photo manipulator(s) unknown to me – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

As seen, it has the outward appearance of being a very old, sepia photograph depicting what looks initially like a dead pterodactylian pterosaur pinned with wings outstretched to the front of a barn, in front of which are standing a number of human figures that may conceivably be cowboys or soldiers, or some of each. In short, it closely matches verbal descriptions that have been given by those people claiming to have seen the original, missing thunderbird photograph but alleging that the creature in question was a pterodactyl or at least a pterodactyl-like entity rather than an unequivocal (albeit extremely large!) feathered bird.

However, even the most cursory of glances at this photograph revealed straight away to me that it was a hoax, due to the unambiguously fraudulent nature of the thunderbird portrayed in it. Even if we choose to ignore the scarcely inconsiderable fact that the most recent pterodactyls known from the current fossil record are at least 65 million years old, with no scientifically-confirmed modern-day living example known, thereby rendering as decidedly remote the likelihood of the thunderbird in this photo being genuine, the latter entity is instantly recognizable as a fake, because of its readily visible composite nature. For whereas it sports the crested, beaked head of a Pteranodon-like pterodactyl, the bone structure of its wings as seen through the wing membranes is diagnostically that of a bat!

Pterosaur wing's bone structure (top) and bat wing's bone structure (bottom) (© National Geographic – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

As shown above, a pterosaur's wing only contains a single greatly elongated finger, the 4th, which runs along its outer edge within the wing membrane. Conversely, a bat's wing contains three greatly elongated fingers. These are the 3rd, which runs along its outer edge within the wing membrane, plus the 4th and the 5th, both of which are contained further down within the wing membrane. In addition, the less elongated 2nd finger is contained within the wing membrane above the 3rd finger. This bat wing structure is precisely the version exhibited by the fake thunderbird's wings.

Yet even though within just a few moments of having first seen it I knew categorically that this photo was a fake, I decided to see out of sheer curiosity whether  I could uncover the major original components in it that had been utilized and converted via digital manipulation to yield its image. I began with the barn, and using a combination of search engines I soon discovered the original, unmodified barn photograph that had been used. A full-colour modern-day photo, it appears on numerous websites, of which the earliest that I could find was in a 11 August 2010 post by Texas-based photographer Nancy Wingo Ridley (username = Rustic Images) on the Foundmyself website (please click here to access its site), being one of numerous attractive countryside-themed photographs that this website offers for sale. Please click here to see this photo on the Foundmyself site (where it is described as "Old barn and wagon near Fredricksburg, Tx"); and please click here to see Nancy's Foundmyself page containing her many exquisitely beautiful photographs that are available on this site.

When I compared this genuine full-colour modern-day photo of a barn with the fake thunderbird photo, it was immediately evident that the former had been used by the faker as the basis of the latter, as can be seen here:

Comparison of the fake thunderbird photograph (top) with the genuine full-colour modern-day photo of a barn (bottom) that was digitally manipulated by person(s) unknown to help create the fake thunderbird photo (creator(s) of fake thunderbird photo unknown to me / (© Rustic Photos – reproduced here in low-resolution format on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only; please click here to visit the excellent Rustic Photos page of images where the original full-colour barn photograph is just one of numerous beautiful countryside-themed pictures produced by her that can be purchased)

As can also be seen, only three major changes have been made via digital manipulation to the actual structure of the barn. The barn door has been widened, the wheeled contraption in front of it has been removed, and the triangular section on the lower right-hand side of the barn roof has been digitally raised, i.e. stretched vertically, so that its outer edge is now tucked just underneath that of the barn roof's upper right-hand side. The effect of this is to make the barn horizontally wider at that particular point – but why would the faker choose to do this? The answer is quite simple – to make the barn wide enough at that particular point for the right-hand wingtip of the wings-outstretched pterodactyl to fit fully on it and thereby match the descriptions of claimed eyewitnesses of the original missing thunderbird photo. Had the faker not done this and had simply used the original full-colour barn photo unmodified, the pterodactyl's right-hand wingtip would have projected quite a way over the edge of the barn roof's lower right-hand edge instead of being contained entirely within it.

Added to the very decent job that the faker has done in converting the modern-day colour barn photo into an aged-looking, purposefully slightly blurry, sepia-tinted photo that one might indeed assume to be 150-or-so years old (as the original, missing thunderbird photo will be by now if it truly exists), this digital widening of the barn in order to make the pterodactyl fit upon it was, I felt, was a clever, well thought-out additional modification of the original full-colour barn photograph – or it would have been, were it not for one massive oversight that again instantly exposed the thunderbird photo to me as a hoax.

Enlarge the two photos, look at the trees surrounding the barn in the original full-colour barn photo, then look at them surrounding the barn in the thunderbird photo. As you will see, they are not just similar, they are identical in every way – every leaf, every twig, every angle of foliage in the original full-colour barn photo is duplicated exactly in the thunderbird photo! An exact match in every way.

One can only assume that either the faker had been careless and had not thought to modify digitally the trees and their foliage in the thunderbird photo so that they were visually distinct from those in the original barn photo, or had chosen simply to ignore this aspect of the photos in the hope that their identical nature would not be spotted (or perhaps the faker did try but found the process too difficult, so decided to leave this aspect alone?).

How long has this fake thunderbird photo been in existence? By using a combination of different search engines once again, the earliest instance of its presence online that I could find was 27 March 2017, on the website tunepk.me (but a link to it no longer operates), which was thrown up by the search engine TinEye. Here is a screenshot of that latter result:

Earliest search result for the fake thunderbird photo discovered by me, thrown up by TinEye (© TinEye – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

In contrast, its 11 August 2010 appearance on the Foundmyself website for Rustic Images is the earliest appearance online that I could find for the full-colour barn photo, i.e. a full seven years before the fake thunderbird photo.

Turning my attention away from the barn and its surroundings to the composite pterodactyl-headed bat-winged thunderbird, I then decided to see if I could trace online the original photo from where the latter's wings had been obtained by the faker. This again proved surprisingly easy – I soon found a photo of a fruit bat in flight whose wings were identical to the thunderbird's, as readily revealed when this bat photo was simply rotated so that the orientation of the bat's wings lined up with that of the thunderbird's wings in order to make easier direct comparisons of the two images.

Of particular note is that a small notch, presumably the result of some injury, can be discerned at the edge of the section of membrane extending between the very elongated 4th and 5th fingers of the bat's dark brown right-hand wing. It shows up very well in the bat photo because of the pale blue sky visible through it. When these dark brown bat wings were added by the faker to the thunderbird photo, however, the notch is no longer so readily spotted because now it is the dark brown barn that is showing through it (rather than the much more contrasting pale blue sky in the original bat photo), but if you enlarge the thunderbird photo you can then detect the notch.

Here for comparison purposes is the fake thunderbird photo alongside the bat photo, the latter having been rotated by me so that its wing orientation corresponds with that of the bat-winged pterodactyl-headed thunderbird in order for direct visual comparisons to be more easily made:

Fake thunderbird photo (top) and bat photo (bottom) (photo-manipulator(s) unknown to me / (© 945ontwerp/cdc.gov – reproduced here in low-resolution format on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

I discovered that this bat photo had been snapped by a photographer with the screen name 945ontwerp, who had first uploaded it onto a Getty Images website named iStock on 5 June 2007 (please click here to browse through his portfolio of spectacular photos available for purchase), but it has since appeared in numerous online publications. In particular, it opens an article written by Linda McIntosh and entitled 'Meet bats, creepy night critters' that appeared on the same day, 18 October 2016, in a number of different American newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune (click here to access it) as well as the Morning Call, San Diego Union-Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and New York Daily News (and in which the photo, oddly, is credited to cdc.gov).

Finally: the feet of the bat in the bat photo do not match those of the thunderbird, indicating that a separate photographic source was used by the faker to yield these. Sure enough, while seeking the photographic source of the bat wings, I actually came across several different bat photos in each of which the depicted bat's feet were sufficiently similar to those of the thunderbird that some only very minor digital modification and enlargement would be needed in order to create the latter appendages. Incidentally, after some consideration I decided not to expend any additional time on this photo, as would be required were I to seek out the original image sources for the men standing in front of the thunderbird, because as can clearly be seen here, I have already presented more than sufficient evidence to confirm that this photo is a fake. However, if anyone reading this ShukerNature blog article of mine does have the time and the patience to do so, I'd certainly be very interested to learn if you succeed in tracing them online.

Another cryptozoological fake conclusively exposed, Case solved.

My sincere thanks to Randi MacDonald/Mosasaur for kindly bringing this fake thunderbird photograph to my attention.

An extensive documentation of alleged modern-day sightings and encounters with thunderbirds can be found in my book Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors.

Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors (© Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publications)

 

 

 

Wednesday, 6 September 2017

DREAMCHILD AND VAMPIRES AND HOBBITS, OH MY! [an Eclectarium of Doctor Shuker crosspost]


'Kong: Skull Island' publicity poster and film still (© Jordan Vogt-Roberts/Legendary Pictures/Tencent Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures)

I've viewed quite a number of fantasy-themed movies lately, some new, some vintage, some exceedingly obscure, but most of them offering various degrees of cryptozoological/zoomythological content and relevance. So be sure to click the link below to read my mini-reviews of these films, first published on my Facebook wall but now preserved together in my Eclectarium:

The Eclectarium of Doctor Shuker: DREAMCHILD AND VAMPIRES AND HOBBITS, OH MY!

An adult female graphorn with her calf - from 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' (© David Yates/Heyday Films/Warner Bros. Pictures)





Friday, 25 November 2016

STILL IN SEARCH OF PREHISTORIC SURVIVORS - AFTER 21 YEARS, THE WAIT IS FINALLY OVER!



It has been 21 years since the original publication back in 1995 of In Search of Prehistoric Survivors, considered by many to be my finest cryptozoological volume. Not surprisingly, then, in subsequent years there has been a growing, persistent clamour among its numerous fans worldwide for me to prepare a new, updated edition. Now, at last, fulfilling a longstanding promise, I have done so - and what an update it is!

At over 600 pages long, with a word count of almost 260,000, more than 300 colour and b/w illustrations (including many stunning renditions plus spectacular cover artwork by acclaimed crypto-artist William M. Rebsamen), and a brand-new foreword penned by fellow crypto-chronicler Michael Newton, this is both a massively-expanded new edition of the original volume and a valid stand-alone book in its own right, because it contains many entirely new cryptids as well as updates for all of those previously included here. The result is the most comprehensive documentation and analysis ever published of those diverse mystery beasts that at one time or another have been postulated to be bona fide prehistoric survivors.

Where it all began, 21 years ago - the original edition, In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors, published in 1995 (© Dr Karl Shuker)

But if these elusive beasts do indeed exist, could they really be creatures that time forgot? From sea serpents and lake monsters to living non-avian dinosaurs and surviving pterodactyls, from bunyips and behemoths to Nandi bears, devil-pigs, thunderbirds, thylacoleonids, and many many more, read the meticulous, objective, and always scrupulously scientific assessments of each and every cryptozoological case presented in this fascinating book, and judge for yourself.

An ideal Christmas present for every cryptozoological enthusiast, Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors can now be ordered on Amazon and elsewhere online – click here to visit its dedicated page on my website, which contains direct clickable links to its purchasing pages on Amazon USA and Amazon UK respectively. And if you order it here on Amazon USA between now and November 28 (up to 02:59 am EST) 2016, using the promo code HOLIDAYBOOK at checkout under the "Gift cards & promotional codes" section, you will save a sizeable $10 off its selling price!!







Saturday, 22 October 2016

PHONEY PHOTOS OF THE THUNDERBIRD AND BIGFOOT KIND - SHOOTING DOWN ANOTHER TWO EXAMPLES


A fake 'shot thunderbird' photo (above) and a fake 'shot bigfoot' photo (below) (creator unknown to me / © Kryptomaniacle – included here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only)

I recently noted on Facebook that I consider it very important to publicly expose and debunk fake cryptozoological photographs, because in doing so it not only  prevent them from cluttering the archives of cryptozoology in the future but also prevents cryptozoological sceptics from using them as evidence for claiming that the subject is credulous and not scientifically rigorous. So with that in mind, here are another two such photos that I have recently been able to shoot down as phoneys.

The first of these came to my attention on 12 October 2016 while I was browsing online – I first spotted it in the forums section of the Taurusarmed.net website, where it had been posted by someone with the username Moondawg on 5 June 2015, but I subsequently discovered that it had been posted by various other people on a number of other sites too. As seen here, it is a typical example of the 'shot thunderbird photograph' motif (click here for the saga of this ostensibly real but elusive image), of which numerous confirmed fake versions are still doing the rounds online, and which consist of what appears to be a vintage photo of hunters posing alongside an enormous dead winged creature, the thunderbird (aka 'big bird'), fastened with wings outstretched to a wall or barn door. In some such photos, the thunderbird is avian, in others it is pterosaurian – it is the latter in the version under consideration here.

The fake 'shot thunderbird photograph' (creator unknown to me)

As soon as I saw the photo, it seemed obvious to me that it was yet another fake. I freely confess that I am no photographic expert, but in terms of both contrast and edges the pterosaur was far sharper than anything in the remainder of the photograph. Moreover, as a zoologist I was readily aware that the pterosaur's morphology was consistent with the typical reconstruction of the American pterodactyl Pteranodon that was preponderant in books and magazines dating from the 1960s and 1970s, as opposed to ones from present-day publications and considered by present-day palaeontologists to be accurate.

With this in mind, I decided to conduct an online image search in the hope of tracing the original vintage photograph that had evidently been utilised by the unknown creator to produce this fake 'shot thunderbird' photo, and within only a very short time I succeeded in doing so. Here it is:

The original vintage hunters photograph that formed the basis for the fake thunderbird photo (public domain)

I discovered it on the Viewsofthepast.com website, on a page entitled 'Superior View Hunting & Wildlife' (click here to visit it), which contained a lengthy series of vintage hunting photos. The example that had been used as the basis for the fake thunderbird photo was listed as 'H-CAMP07 Log Cabin Hunters', and clearly dated back to at least the early 1930s, and quite possibly even earlier than that.

Here is the original vintage hunters photo and the fake thunderbird photo alongside one another, confirming that except for the Pteranodon presence in the latter the two are identical:

Fake thunderbird photo (above) and original vintage hunters photo (below) (creator unknown to me / public domain)

But what about the Pteranodon image used in the fake thunderbird photo – where had that come from? Again, it didn't take long for me to track that down online. It turned out to be a photo of a Pteranodon model available by various companies as a plastic model kit during the early 1970s (thus explaining why the reconstruction was so dated). I was first alerted to this model kit's existence via the following photograph of its box from the Revell-issued version that I found online:

Box containing 1970s Pteranodon model kit released by Revell (© Revell – included here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only)

As can be seen, the image of the Pteranodon on the lid of this model kit's box is almost identical to that of the Pteranodon in the fake thunderbird photo, and I could readily imagine that if a photo of the fully-assembled model Pteranodon were taken from slightly above the model so that its head, neck, and beak appeared slightly lower down over its body than they do in the picture on the model kit's lid, it would then correspond precisely with the fake thunderbird version.

The Revell Pteranodon picture, the fake thunderbird photo, and the original vintage hunters photo (© Revell – included here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only / creator unknown to me / public domain)

Moreover, Facebook colleague Robert Hodge kindly brought to my attention the following photo of an early 1970s version of the same Pteranodon model, fully assembled, that had been released by Aurora as part of its 'Prehistoric Scenes' series:

The fully-assembled Aurora-released version of the Pteranodon model (© Aurora - included here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only)

(As a noteworthy BTW: whereas the picture on the lid of the Revell version of this model is based directly upon the fully-assembled Pteranodon model itself, the picture on the lid of the Aurora version of this same model is merely a generic Pteranodon image.)

After I had made public on Facebook my findings documented here, another Facebook colleague, Joseph McKee, then used the box-lid picture of the Revell Pteranodon model to recreate via Photoshop the fake thunderbird photo, and as can be seen here his recreation confirms beyond any doubt that this plastic model was indeed the source of the Pteranodon in the fake thunderbird photo:

The fake thunderbird photo (top) and Joseph McKee's recreation of it using the Revell Pteranodon model's picture (bottom) (creator unknown to me / Joseph McKee)

Another case of crypto-photographic forgery well and truly closed!

Moving from 'big birds' to bigfoot: yesterday (21 October 2016), I was once again browsing online when I came upon the following image, purportedly a vintage photograph showing a shot bigfoot and the hunters who had dispatched it. I had been browsing various bigfoot-related sites, and had found it under discussion on several of them. Here it is:

FAKE shot bigfoot photograph - no bigfoot was harmed in the creation of this FAKE photo!! (© Kryptomaniacle – included here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only)

Looking at it, it seemed to me to be another vintage American hunters photo into which something foreign had been introduced – on this occasion some form of animal montage creating the supposed bigfoot, the body possibly being that of a bear, with what may be a gorilla's head (or a model of one?) superimposed on top of it, because the head and body do not appear to be continuous (and the body not very gorilla-like anyway). For what it's worth (pardon the forthcoming pun!), however, there was an additional (and totally unequivocal) clue readily visible in this 'shot bigfoot' picture that confirmed beyond any shadow of a doubt that this was indeed a phoney photograph. And that was the presence of a certain inscription in its bottom left-hand corner, reading 'Worth1000.com' – because this just so happens to be the name of a former website that specialised in competitions for producing the best photoshopped images.

Pursuing this lead, I was able to confirm that the 'shot bigfoot' had indeed been submitted for one of Worth1000's competitions – specifically, its 'Monster Hoaxes 6' contest, held in early 2012; that it was Worth1000 Design #8830992; and that the person who had submitted it was based in the USA and had the username Kryptomaniacle. Click here to see this photo's official submission page. Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain further information because Worth1000.com has been taken over by the graphic design website DesignCrowd, and only its members can obtain more specific details regarding Worth1000 submissions, usernames, etc (and because this site's members need to be graphic designers, which I'm not, I'm not a member).

However, Kryptomaniacle did state alongside this bigfoot-inspired photo that he/she had photoshopped it as an April Fool's joke. It came 15th out of the 27 submissions in the contest (click here to see all of the entries). Some entrants provided the original sources used in creating their submissions, but unfortunately Kryptomaniacle didn't do so.

What I needed to do, therefore, was to do what I'd done with the fake thunderbird photo – i.e. trace the original vintage hunters photo that had evidently been used as the 'shot bigfoot' photo's basis. Once again, it wasn't long before I succeeded in doing this – and here it is:

Original vintage American deer hunters photograph used as the basis of the FAKE shot bigfoot photo (public domain)

I found it on the Wideopenspaces.com website, on a page entitled 'The Good Old Days@ 30 Historic Hunting Photos [Pics]' – click here to view this page (the vintage deer hunters photo used as the basis for the 'shot bigfoot' photo is Photo #26). It had originally appeared in Canada's Ottawa Sun newspaper.

As shown below, when the original vintage hunters photo and Kryptomaniacle's fake bigfoot photo are viewed alongside one another, it can be readily seen that except for the shot deer in the former photo and the ropes-suspended 'shot bigfoot' in the latter one (plus the image of an ungulate skull positioned over the body of the 'bigfoot'), the two are identical. Moreover, even the ungulate skull is a composite, combining the antlers of the deer in the original vintage hunters photo with the skull from some entirely different individual (and which may actually be a cow skull rather than a deer skull anyway).

FAKE shot bigfoot photo (top) and original vintage American hunters photo (bottom) (© Kryptomaniacle – included here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis only / public domain)

All that remains to be done now in order to complete the full exposure of this 'shot bigfoot' photo's origins is to trace Kryptomaniacle's sources for the 'bigfoot' head and body, and for the ungulate skull placed over the body. Yet even if this isn't achieved, what I have already revealed here in relation to it is more than sufficient to verify the photo's fake nature.

Indeed, the 'Worth1000.com' inscription should have been enough for anyone to have realised straight away that the 'shot bigfoot' photo was a phoney, which is why I was so surprised to find it the subject of serious discussion as to its possible authenticity on various websites. Having said that, I must make a clear differentiation regarding this photo between its being a fake and a hoax. Yes, it IS a fake, created by Kryptomaniacle using photoshopping techniques; but it is NOT a hoax, because it was submitted openly by Kryptomaniacle for a public photoshopping competition, with no intention to deceive, having been clearly identified by him/her as a photoshopped image. It is only because it has subsequently been uploaded by others onto various sites where it has mistakenly been thought to be real that cryptozoological confusion concerning its true origin and nature has occurred.

My sincere thanks to Robert Hodge and Joseph McKee for their much-appreciated assistance in relation to my researches documented here.

From bear to bigfoot - another FAKE bigfoot photograph that I debunked - click here to read all about it.

NB: For any potential/former advertisers who may be mistakenly assuming that this page contains photographs of real, dead bigfoot specimens - it does NOT! As fully revealed here, all photos under consideration on this page are FAKE, as are the bigfoot specimens themselves that are depicted in them. No bigfoot specimens were used or harmed in the creation of these photographs!