Late 1800s engraving of a pangolin
Also known as scaly anteaters, pangolins are native
to Africa and Asia, and have
been implicated in certain cryptozoological cases - most notably the veo reported
from the small Indonesian island of Rinca, and the fraudulent gorgakh of India (click here
for my ShukerNature coverage of both of these animals). However, I am only
aware of a single case in which a pangolin has featured in a report of a
supposed living dinosaur – and here it is.
Although I've had this account on file for many
years, I misplaced it a long time ago, and even though I've wanted to refer to
it since then on a number of occasions in various of my publications, I could never
do so, because I've never been able to find it again - until tonight, when, as
so often happens, I came upon it unexpectedly. Having done so, however, I am now
placing it on record here without delay, to ensure that I never lose track of it
again!
Chinese pangolin depicted on a North Vietnam postage stamp issued in 1965
Published in the 18 February 1964 issue of the then-weekly British magazine Animals,
it consists of a response by English zoologist Dr Maurice Burton to a letter
from a reader that had been published in a previous issue and which had dealt
with the possible existence of living dinosaurs and pterodactyls.
The reason why I couldn’t find this account in my
files before is that I had forgotten that its first part dealt not with
pangolins but instead with Burton's belief that a large and very distinctive
African waterbird known as the shoebill Balaeniceps rex was being
mistaken for pterodactyls when seen in flight – a plausible theory that I have
documented in further detail within my book In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995).
Shoebill – a modern-day pterodactyl
impersonator, depicted in a 1901 painting
Consequently, I had filed it away in a folder
dealing with sightings of alleged living pterosaurs, which is not one,
therefore, that I was ever likely to look through in search of a
pangolin-related item.
Anyway: back to this rediscovered account's
pangolin section. After identifying living African pterodactyls as shoebills, Burton then considered the prospect of living dinosaurs,
and provided a delightful anecdote as a reason why one should not always take
eyewitness accounts on face value.
A pangolin illustration from the
1830s
Over the years, I've collected a number of wonderfully-bizarre
zoological misidentifications (my book From Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings, 1997, contains an entire
chapter devoted to some of them; and a particularly surreal one, the Kintail
'capybara', is documented here on
ShukerNature), but Burton's drolly-recalled example is definitely one of my
favourites, which is another reason why I am so pleased to have finally found
it again. Here is what he wrote:
"Several reports of dinosaurs, from
places as far apart as Canada and Borneo, have been investigated – insofar as
one can investigate the report of an eyewitness. In none of these cases were
there any solid grounds for supposing the reports to be more substantial than
the one from Malaya. There a witness reported having seen a
dinosaur cross the road in the beams of his headlamps. He estimated it to be
not less than 25 feet long.
"When taken round the galleries of
the Raffles Museum so that he could indicate the kind of animal he thought he
had seen, he pointed without hesitation to a pangolin and agreed he had
misjudged size and distance. The Malayan pangolin is less than 3 feet
long."
The perils of pangolins upon accurate judgement
when encountered unexpectedly! In so many cryptozoological cases, mystery beasts
are very much in the eye of the beholder – but not always, which is why I
remain fascinated by the subject.
A taxiderm specimen of the
aptly-named long-tailed pangolin (© Hectonichus/Wikipedia)
To be fair, however, anyone not familiar with
pangolins might well consider them reptilian based upon their scaly outward
appearance, and their surprise at suddenly seeing such an exotic-looking animal
might well lead them to exaggerate its size and distort its form when recalled
at a later time - unless of course there really is an unknown, giant variety
of pangolin existing incognito within the jungles of Malaysia…??
A living pangolin – not a
living dinosaur! (public domain)
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