MONKEYS IN AUSTRALIA? REVISITING A FORGOTTEN FURRY MYSTERY DOWN UNDER

An early lithograph of the spotted cuscus – the identity of Cape York Peninsula's mystery monkeys? (public domain)

Zoologically speaking, Australia is most famous for its marsupials (pouched mammals) and monotremes (egg-laying mammals). It does contain a number of native species of placental (higher) mammal too – the predominant mammalian category everywhere else in the world – in the form of various rodents and bats. Since this island continent was colonised by humans, however, many non-native placental mammals have been introduced here as well, such as domestic cats and dogs (notably the dingo during a very early stage of human colonisation), deer, sheep, cattle, foxes, and rabbits. However, there is no official confirmation that Australia has ever been home to monkeys – which is why an outbreak of monkey reports here during the early 1930s is so intriguing, and, although all-but-forgotten today, has never been satisfactorily resolved.

One of the world's last unspoiled wildernesses, boasting a rich abundance of relatively undisturbed habitats including tropical rainforest and wooded savannahs, Cape York Peninsula is a vast, remote triangle jutting northward from northernmost Queensland into the Torres Strait, separating Australia at that point from New Guinea. If mystery animals could exist undetected anywhere in northern Australia, this is where they would be. And sure enough, in autumn 1932, after a party of bold, adventurous gold prospectors had penetrated this secluded realm, they came back home to Townsville with tales of having encountered there some very strange and, for Australia, extremely unexpected creatures – monkeys. And not just a few monkeys either. According to a remarkable report appearing on 19 September 1932 in an Adelaide, South Australia, newspaper entitled the News, "several thousand" of these mystifying creatures had been seen (though this count was reduced to "hundreds" further down in that same report).

The prospectors had journeyed to the region of Cape York Peninsula situated between the Lockhart and Pascoe Rivers, 130 miles south of Cape York and 40 miles from the coast. This area's almost impenetrable terrain, apparently having never before been explored by Westerners, was so densely packed with large trees bearing great quantities of red nuts that they "had to fight their way" through, and it was here where they encountered the monkeys, after having initially being alerted to their existence by natives. The monkeys were inhabiting an area 60 miles long by 30 miles wide, and according to the prospectors they "seemed to be of the Malayan breed, about the size of an average dog, and weighing about 30 lb".

Cape York Peninsula monkeys report in the News (Adelaide), 19 September 1932  - click to enlarge for reading purposes (public domain)

Versions of this report simultaneously appeared in a number of other Australian newspapers too, including one in Queensland's Townsville Daily Bulletin claiming that the monkeys seen by the prospectors were in groups of about 15-20 individuals, and that there were "numerous" such groups. These reports were followed by a second account emerging just a day later, on 20 September, from a gold prospector named R. King. As again covered in a wide range of newspaper reports across Australia, he stated that he had not only encountered some monkeys but had even shot a couple of them while exploring one particular area of Cape York Peninsula. According to a report that appeared in the Maryborough Chronicle on 20 September 1932, documenting King's testimony:

The area in which King located the animals is south-east of the Batavia goldfield, embracing the McIlwraith Range [a rugged granitic plateau], the area being about 30 miles wide and extending along the peninsula for approximately 60 miles. King said today that he journeyed on the western side of the range searching for gold. There was nothing there that suggested human beings had ever been in that locality. Progress was difficult with horses being impeded by sugarcane grass growing to enormous heights, in some instances up to 15 feet. In this scrub the prospector saw mobs of monkeys frequently during his four or five weeks' stay. They were generally in parties from 15 to 25.

But that was not all:

Though he could not get closer than rifle range he shot a couple during his stay. Observations he made seemed to indicate that the male was much larger than the female and the largest would not exceed about 30lb.

If only King had brought back the body of one of the shot monkeys (or at least some portion of it) for scientific examination. Having said that, however, carrying what would have been a rapidly-decomposing, stinking carcase back with him through difficult terrain in the humid conditions prevalent in this locality would not have been the easiest or most pleasant of tasks, so I can certainly understand why he didn't do so, even if such a thought had indeed occurred to him. Equally, as he was not a professional zoologist himself, he probably would not have realised the scientific significance that even just a selection of one of the shot monkey's teeth and/or a single jawbone, for instance, would have held for zoologists examining them,

Nevertheless, according to an article published on 1 October 1932 by a Cairns, Queensland, newspaper entitled the Northern Herald, King was willing to self-finance a two-man expedition, consisting of himself and a scientific representative, back to the location where he'd seen the animals, provided that "a substantial reimbursement were guaranteed on production of the specimens". As far as I am aware, however, no such expedition was ever launched, so presumably King did not receive any such guarantee.

Well worth recalling at this point is that during the second half of the 19^th Century, a number of acclimatisation societies sprang up all over Australia. Their shared goal was to introduce into the wild a vast diversity of exotic, non-native species that their members considered would be beneficial for food, for cultural exchange purposes with other countries, or, in some cases, for purely aesthetic reasons (i.e. they were attractive species, or were familiar ones that reminded the societies' members of Europe). In order to achieve this, the societies sought to create captive-breeding colonies from which releases into the wild could subsequently be carried out until self-sustaining populations had established themselves there.

Madagascan ring-tailed lemurs roaming wild in Australia? It nearly happened! (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Among the mammalian species on their lists of proposed releases were such geographically and taxonomically diverse creatures as South American agoutis, African elands, Madagascan ring-tailed lemurs – and several species of monkey. Indeed, in 1861, Edward Wilson, the founder of Victoria's acclimatisation society, wrote to this Australian state's governor requesting that monkeys be released into the Victorian bush: "…for the amusement of the wayfarer, whom their gambols would delight as he lay under some gum tree in the forest on a sultry day". Happily, however, for the survival of Australia's unique, irreplaceable endemic fauna, very few of these alien species bred successfully even in captivity at the societies' various breeding centres (let alone in the wild). Consequently, most of the planned releases never took place, and I am not aware of any record of official monkey releases having occurred anywhere on this continent. But might there have been some unofficial, undocumented, unpublicised acclimatisation efforts involving monkeys that were successful, with Cape York Peninsula being deemed an ideal locality for such creatures to live and thrive (which, indeed, it is)? Yet if not, what other explanations can be offered for the gold prospectors' sightings here?

During the weeks that followed the two prospector accounts being widely disseminated by the Australian media, several additional articles were also published, containing opinions regarding the possible identity of Cape York Peninsula's supposed monkeys, as proffered by a range of scientists and others who were variously interested in or dismissive of this mystifying affair. But once its initial novelty had worn off, however, and (as always happens with ephemeral subjects like this) the media began looking elsewhere for curiosities to publicise, the Peninsula's enigmatic primates vanished from the headlines, and eventually from all but the most tenacious memories within the zoological community too.

Indeed, if referred to at all nowadays (which it seldom is), this entire episode is normally dismissed as the outcome of a regrettable misidentification by the gold prospector eyewitnesses, mistaking one or other of two already-known types of marsupial for monkeys. As will now be shown here, however, neither of these 'official' identities stands up to close scrutiny. Having said that, there seems little doubt that some form of creature was encountered (and in some numbers) amid this peninsula's remote backwaters, so what might it have been?

An 1884 lithograph of Lumholtz's tree kangaroo (public domain)

When the story of the alleged monkeys in the Peninsula broke, two different but equally popular mainstream identities were variously proposed for them by a number of different authorities. One of these identities was some form of tree kangaroo – as suggested, for instance, by Ludwig Glauert, then Curator of Perth Museum.

Two species are native to Australia, and both occur in a small portion of Cape York Peninsula's easternmost basal region. The smaller and more common of these is Lumholtz's tree kangaroo Dendrolagus lumholtzi, a rainforest-inhabiting species predominantly black and grizzled grey in colour, with somewhat short limbs but an exceedingly long tail, and only weighing up to around 20 lb maximum. Larger and rarer here is Bennett's tree kangaroo D. bennettianus, dark chocolate-brown above and fawn below, with longer limbs, a very long tail, and weighing up to 30 lb in adult males (females are much smaller). It inhabits both mountain and lowland tropical rainforest, but is notoriously elusive.

An 1894 lithograph of Bennett's tree kangaroo (public domain)

In terms of dimensions, maximum-sized Bennett's tree kangaroos are comparable to the largest 30-lb alleged monkeys as estimated by King and the other prospectors; but in terms of morphology, neither species of Peninsula tree kangaroo is particularly simian. Moreover, whereas both species have very long, noticeable tails, no mention of tails occurred in either of the two gold prospector reports – indicating, perhaps, that the creatures that they encountered were either tailless or only possessed short, inconspicuous tails?

In addition, whereas all Old World monkeys are strictly diurnal, as the creatures encountered by the prospectors clearly were too, both of these tree kangaroo species are principally nocturnal (exhibiting only limited, spasmodic daytime activity), so they wouldn't have been readily perceived or even met with by their eyewitnesses, and neither species occurs in large groups or parties like the creatures sighted anyway (Lumholtz's occurs in small, loose-knit reproductive groups of just 3-5 adult members). Also, if they had indeed been nothing more than tree kangaroos, the region's native inhabitants would surely have known this, and therefore would not have specifically called the prospectors' attention to them.

Instead, and even before his own first-hand encounter with the alleged monkeys, King had already been informed by aboriginals inhabiting the Daintree River area that monkeys lived in the Peninsula. However, he had discounted their claims, assuming that the creatures that they were referring to were simply tree kangaroos – until he saw them with his own eyes, and realised that they were not. This also demonstrates that King knew what tree kangaroos looked like, and therefore would not have been confused by them.

Ion Idriess (public domain)

At the time of the media reports concerning the Cape York Peninsula monkeys, one of the few Westerners to have explored sizeable portions of this region was Australian writer Ion Idriess. When media reporters asked his opinion as to these mystery animals' possible identity, he speculated that they may have been either a species of tree kangaroo or, his personal preference, a very large phalanger – which brings us to the second popular mainstream identity offered for the Peninsula monkeys.

Phalangers are arboreal marsupials closely related to the possums and sugar gliders, and the largest phalangers are the cuscuses (the biggest species of which is New Guinea's black-spotted cuscus Spilocuscus rufoniger, up to 4 ft long and weighing as much as 15 lb). Although cuscuses are predominantly found in New Guinea and on certain Indonesian islands close by, two New Guinea species also occur in Australia's Cape York Peninsula.

Taxiderm specimen of the spotted cuscus (© Markus Bühler)

Of these two, the species less likely to explain this region's supposed monkeys is the well-named spotted cuscus S. maculatus, because in the male its thick brown fur is indeed handsomely and very noticeably patterned with irregular white spots and blotches, which sometimes are so extensive that the animal appears white with brown blotches (females are unspotted). This striking characteristic is of course conspicuous only by its absence in the prospectors' monkey accounts, yet due to its eyecatching nature it would surely have been reported by them if it had indeed been exhibited by the monkeys (some of them would certainly have been males).

The second cuscus species native to this peninsula is the grey cuscus Phalanger mimicus (which is closely related, and similar in overall appearance, to the more familiar ground cuscus P. gymnotis). Its woolly unpatterned fur is grey-brown dorsally and laterally, and off-white ventrally, with a brown mid-dorsal stripe extending along its spine from its ears to its rump.

Ground cuscus (public domain)

As with the tree kangaroos, however, both of these cuscus species are predominantly nocturnal, do not occur in large groups (they are generally solitary animals), and are so cryptic that they are seldom spied even by the region's aboriginals. They are also sluggish and slow-moving, unlike typically active, agile monkeys. Additionally, neither of them attains anything like a weight of 30 lb; on the contrary, no bigger than typical domestic cats they rarely exceed 8 lb in the wild (sometimes more in captivity), with the spotted cuscus being slightly bigger than its grey-furred relative.

In view of such notable discrepancies between cuscuses and monkeys, I was nothing if not surprised, therefore, to discover, via a brief single-line reference to the Cape York Peninsula monkey saga contained in her book Possums: The Brushtails, Ringtails and Greater Glider (2001), that Anne Kerle considered that the grey cuscus was "undoubtedly" the origin of the monkey reports. Further back in time, but no less surprising, was that in his book Furred Animals of Australia (8^th edition, 1965), Australian zoologist Ellis Troughton stated that spotted cuscuses have "a remarkably monkey-like appearance" and that this species may therefore have inspired the Peninsula monkey reports (notwithstanding this cuscus's unmissable spotting?). Moreover, an old, now-obsolete colloquial name for the grey cuscus is 'monkey cuscus', and another, even older (and taxonomically inaccurate!) name for it is 'monkey opossum'. (Taxonomically, the term 'opossum' is restricted to the didelphid marsupials of the Americas.)

I find these allusions to the supposed monkey-like appearance of cuscuses to be very perplexing, even bizarre. For as someone who has seen living cuscuses at close hand in captivity while visiting Australia, I can readily affirm that they do not look like monkeys at all – being far closer in appearance to certain lemurs among the primates. Nor am I alone in that view, because it was also expressed back in the 1930s by various commentators in relation to the possible identity of the Peninsula monkeys.

A decidedly (and accurately) lemurine representation of the spotted cuscus in an 1890s engraving (public domain)

For instance: in an article focusing upon the Peninsula's cuscuses and published by the Queenslander newspaper on 22 August 1935, the columnist 'Wanderer' uncompromisingly stated: "How the cuscus came to be called the "monkey opossum" I cannot say, but the name is not appropriate, for the creature is neither monkey-like in appearance nor habits". Similarly, in an Adelaide Advertiser article of 10 December 1932, its author, Donald Thomson, who was leading an expedition in the Cape York district, bluntly confirmed that when a cuscus is closely examined: "…it does not look at all like a monkey". Amen to that!

Equally, as with the tree kangaroos, the Peninsula aboriginals would have been familiar with the cuscuses living there, so surely they would not have attempted to portray them to the prospectors as anything other than cuscuses. Also of note is that when Australian naturalist-prospector William McLennan suggested to King that what he had seen were cuscuses, King denied this, stating that he was familiar with cuscuses, and that what he had seen were monkeys, not cuscuses.

No other native mammals in Cape York Peninsula look like monkeys either, so if we sensibly choose to dismiss as implausible the premise that not only the prospectors but even the native aboriginals had all been extremely unknowledgeable regarding the animals encountered by them there and even less adept at identifying them correctly, the true nature of these supposed monkeys remains a mystery – unless of course they really were monkeys! Yet if this is true, how can the presence of such blatantly non-native animals in the wilds of Australia be explained?

William H.D. Le Souef (public domain)

During his newspaper account, prospector King opined that these reputed monkeys had come from Malaya during the early days of trading between southeastern Asia and Australia, and had remained in reclusive anonymity ever since within the Peninsula's dense scrub where Westerners had not penetrated prior to the recent forays there by himself and the other prospectors. This notion was echoed by Ion Idriess, who conceded that it was plausible that a few monkeys had originally escaped ashore from trading steamers or from wrecks, had thrived and bred in the Peninsula, and had eventually given rise to a self-sustaining population there. Even the eminent Australian naturalist William H.D. Le Souef from Sydney's Taronga Park Zoo stated that it was quite possible that the prospectors' information was correct.

But even if this were so, what kind of monkey might they have been? King and the party of prospectors variously made comparisons between the Peninsula creatures and Malayan monkeys, and suggested a Malayan origin for them, and it is true that 11 different species of monkey collectively exist in mainland Malaysia and in its two states on Borneo (Sabah and Sarawak). They fall into two categories – very slender, long-limbed, long-tailed langurs or leaf monkeys (7 Malaysian species), and sturdier, shorter-limbed, often only short-tailed macaques (4 Malaysian species, following the recent taxonomic splitting into two of the pig-tailed macaque). Moreover, both of these monkey types socialise in large groups (sometimes extremely large in the case of macaques), just as reported by the prospectors for the creatures that they saw.

An 1800s lithograph of a langur or leaf monkey (public domain)

Confined to Borneo, the largest Malaysian langur, the famous proboscis monkey Nasalis larvatus with its huge grotesque nose in the adult male, can surely be eliminated from consideration straight away. This is because not only is its nasal appearance so distinctive that the prospectors would have assuredly mentioned it specifically in their accounts, but males can exceed 60 lb in weight, i.e. more than double the size estimated by the prospectors for even the largest of the creatures that they saw. Other Malaysian langurs, conversely, such as the silvery (crested) langur Trachypithecus cristatus and the spectacled langur T. obscurus, only attain half the weight claimed by the prospectors for the largest of their alleged monkeys (little more than a third in the white-fronted langur Presbytis frontata), and (like tree kangaroos) they possess extremely long, visible tails.

Macaques native to Malaysia include the crab-eating macaque Macaca fascicularis and the two near-identical pig-tailed macaque species M. leonina and M. nemetrina. Unlike a number of other macaques, however, the crab-eating macaque does have a long tail, and males attain a maximum weight of only around 20 lb. Yet, interestingly, this is a notable invasive species, having been successfully introduced to a number of non-native territories where it now thrives, including New Guinea, which as noted earlier is immediately to the north of Australia's Cape York Peninsula, separated from it only via the Torres Strait.

Crab-eating macaque (public domain)

During the course of history, many large species have spread from one region to another via rafting across stretches of water on floating debris, vegetable mats, etc – could specimens of this macaque species have done the same, from New Guinea to Cape York Peninsula? The pig-tailed macaques have only a fairly short tail, but their males are slightly smaller in size than those of the crab-eating macaque, as are those of the stump-tailed macaque M. arctoides, which has an even shorter tail.

A pig-tailed macaque (public domain)

A third option is also worth a consideration – might these so-called monkeys have actually been apes, specifically gibbons? After all, laymen frequently refer to gibbons (and other apes too) as monkeys. Four species exist in Malaysia, of which the siamang Symphalangus syndactylus is much too big, but the other three – the agile gibbon Hylobates agilis, lar gibbon H. lar, and Müller's Bornean gibbon H. muelleri – are smaller and, like all gibbons, are tailless.

When I first read the two prospector accounts describing the alleged monkeys witnessed by them, however, I immediately thought of macaques, in terms of both their appearance and their large groups. These monkeys also have a much closer affinity with humans than langurs and gibbons, being frequently kept as pets aboard ships, as well as used in scientific research (the famous rhesus monkey Macaca mulatta, a commonly-used laboratory species, is a macaque). Consequently, if we assume that the Peninsula mystery beasts were real, and that they were indeed monkeys, perhaps they were macaques that had escaped or been released there by Malay traders visiting northern Australia, with their body size either exaggerated by the prospectors or, with no notable predators in this secluded region, larger than normal specimens having subsequently arisen. Of course, the prospectors' claim of seeing "several thousand" of these monkeys is worrying with regard to their account's authenticity, but this may well be due to journalistic hyperbole, because "hundreds" was used further down in the same newspaper articles covering their account.

Rhesus monkey (public domain)

Today, approximately half of Cape York Peninsula has been given over to cattle grazing, but much of the remaining half is preserved as a national park, with its virgin wilderness still a haven of largely undisturbed tranquillity for its wildlife. Is it conceivable, therefore, that a colony of monkeys genuinely existed here less than a century ago, having descended from some specimens originating from Malay ships and/or rafting across from New Guinea (or possibly even stemming from some unpublicised, covert acclimatisation-based introductions)?

If so, and, with nothing having occurred during the interim period to have eradicated wildlife in much of this vast, scarcely-penetrable locality, might they still be there today?

An 1890s lithograph of Lumholtz's tree kangaroo (public domain)

FROM STAR WARS TO SMITHFIELD - THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE MEDIEVAL YODA MONK

The Yoda lookalike figure from the Smithfield Decretals (public domain)

The long-awaited latest Star Wars film – Episode VII: The Force Awakens – was released this week, so it seems timely to upload onto ShukerNature the following article of mine that I wrote a while back after purchasing the book Medieval Monsters but never got around to doing anything with, until now…

Long ago, in a galaxy far far away – or, more precisely, in March 2015 on p. 5 of a then newly-published book entitled Medieval Monsters, written by medieval historian Damien Kempf and art historian Maria L. Gilbert – an extraordinary illustration appeared that swiftly attracted considerable media attention, spawning all manner of newspaper and online articles during mid-April. The illustration in question was a figure from an illuminated manuscript dating from the 14^th Century – a figure reproduced at the beginning of this ShukerNature blog article and which, as noted by those numerous media articles, just so happened to bear a striking resemblance to none other than Yoda, the venerable Jedi Grand Master from the Star Wars movie franchise!

Medieval Monsters – a fascinating, sumptuously illustrated survey of monstrous entities depicted in illuminated manuscripts (© Damien Kempf and Maria L. Gilbert/British Library)

Yoda first appeared as a (relatively) sprightly 900-year-old in The Empire Strikes Back – produced by Lucasfilm Ltd, released in 1980 and constituting the second film in the ongoing Star Wars series. In contrast, his Middle Ages doppelgänger appeared over 600 years earlier, in the Smithfield Decretals (a colloquial name deriving from its earliest known provenance, the Augustinian priory of St Bartholomew's at Smithfield, its official title being the Decretals of Gregory IX with glossa ordinaria [i.e. commentary] of Bernard of Parma). This is a parchment codex in Latin, which dates from c.1300-1340, and can be found in the British Library listed as Royal MS 10 E IV (with the mystery figure appearing on f. 30v). Written in southern France (probably Toulouse), the original manuscript arrived in London during the early 1300s where numerous marginal illustrations were added. It was presented to the British Museum in 1757 by King George II as part of the Old Royal Library.

The likeness of the strange entity in this early historical manuscript to Yoda was not actually commented upon in Medieval Monsters, but was highlighted by British Library curator Julian Harrison in his blog Medieval Manuscripts on 17 December 2015 (in a guest post on this same blog for 14 April 2015, the authors of Medieval Monsters had briefly alluded to it in a whimsical poem about their book's contents). Looking at this enigmatic figure, there is unquestionably a similarity, from its monk-like attire, and long ears sticking out at right angles from its head, to its spiky hands, greenish skin, and facial expression. Consequently, once the various media articles aired online, it was not long before fevered speculation arose as to whether Yoda was indeed based upon the enigmatic image from the Smithfield Decretals.

The mystifying monk-like entity from the Smithfield Decretals (left) alongside Yoda as seen in The Empire Strikes Back (right) (public domain/(© Lucasfilm Ltd-20^th Century Fox – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use educational/review basis only)

My official Yoda model (left) and the Smithfield Decretals monk (right) (© Dr Karl Shuker / public domain)

However, the designer of Yoda's distinctive appearance, the late Stuart Freeborn (d. 2013), a British motion picture make-up artist, always stated that the character's face was based upon his own, and that his eyes were inspired by those of Einstein in order to give them a wise but kindly look. Moreover, it seems highly unlikely to say the least that back in the pre-internet years of the 1970s when he was creating Yoda's character, Freeborn was even aware of this exceedingly obscure centuries-old French manuscript, let alone had access to a copy of it.

So if not a prototype for Yoda, what exactly was that medieval manuscript-featured monk with the big ears meant to represent? Some articles erroneously claimed that this orange-robed figure appeared in a retelling of the biblical story of Samson present within the Smithfield Decretals, but in reality the latter manuscript is a collection of canon law composed during the 13^th Century that served as an addition to the Decree of Gratian, the main collection of canon law composed during the 12^th Century. (Decretals are actually collections of papal letters that compile decrees on church law.) Consequently, as postulated on the Auckland Theology & Religious Studies blog, the Yoda impersonator was quite possibly intended to represent the devil attired as a demonic doctor of canon law, signifying that some clerics charged to uphold the law were actually corrupt and exploitative of their flock. The only link, conversely, to Samson is a series of illustrations concerning his life that run along the bottom edge of certain folios of the Smithfield Decretals (including the folio containing the Yoda image in the main text), but which have no connection whatsoever with the subject of the main text.

A snail-cat, depicted in the Maastricht Hours – an illuminated devotional manuscript produced in the Netherlands during the early 1300s (public domain)

However, it is conceivable that this controversial figure may have no religious significance at all, but was merely inserted as a joke by one of the manuscript's illuminators. The creation of non-existent entities by illuminators as sly subversive humour or merely to relieve the tedium of the lengthy task at hand when copying or illustrating such manuscripts is well known, and has even resulted in the recurrent appearance of certain well-defined but entirely fictitious creatures, such as the snail-cat, for instance, as documented by me in a previous ShukerNature article (click here).

Consequently, 'Yoda of the Smithfield Decretals' may well be nothing more than a medieval doodle, whose similarity to the Star Wars character is actually only a superficial one, but which has been blown out of all proportion by the shared monk attire. During the 9 months since Medieval Monsters was published, all manner of other explanations for the ostensible correspondence between the two figures have been aired online, ranging from the sober to the surreal. However, my personal favourite is one alleging that perhaps a time traveller viewed a Star Wars film featuring Yoda, then went back in time to the creation of the Smithfield Decretals and somehow succeeded in surreptitiously including a depiction of Yoda within its text.

As the late, great British broadcaster Robert Robinson was wont to say when faced with 'imaginative' answers to questions: "Ah, would that it were, would that it were".

The Yoda lookalike figure in situ on folio 30 verso from the Smithfield Decretals (British Library/public domain)

FROM MINI-REX TO MOON COW – UNRAVELLING THE RIDDLE OF AMERICA'S MODERN-DAY 'RIVER DINOSAURS'

Photograph allegedly depicting a shot mini-rex or 'river lizard' held by an unidentified figure - emailed by 'Derick' to Chad Arment in April 2000 (copyright owner unknown/identity and current location of 'Derick' unknown so could not be contacted; thus reproduced here for educational/review purposes only, on a strictly Fair Use basis)

In January 2000, veteran American cryptozoologist Ron Schaffner was emailed by someone using only a generic, non-specific email and who identified himself simply as 'Derick', but whose information was anything but generic. Derick attracted Ron's interest straight away, thanks to his emailed report containing the following intriguing introductory statement:

I live in Pueblo, Colorado. I moved out here when I was six and since then I've heard stories of the prairie devil, the pig man and the mini-rex; there's even old Indian legends of evil river demons. You get older and you try not to believe in monsters, however not even the high school kids will have a kegger [outdoor keg beer-drinking teenage parties] down by the river without a raging fire and a lot of people [presumably to ensure that 'monsters' keep well away]. It's not like people don't see things, people see them they just don't make a big deal of it. If you live by the river like me you just get used to it.

Following that enticing preamble, Derick duly cut to the chase, describing his encounter with what appears to have been one of this region's mysterious 'mini-rexes'. He claimed that while he and a friend were riding the latter's dirt-bike close to the Fountain River near Pueblo one day in July 1998, they suddenly saw a truly extraordinary bipedal creature run across the clearing in front of them:

It was three to four feet long, greenish with black markings on its back, and a yellowish-orange under belly. It walked on its hind legs, never dragging its tail, its front limbs (I call them limbs because they were more like arms than anything) were smaller in comparison to the back ones and it had four or three claws/fingers. I'm not sure for it was seen at a great distance. It also had some kind of lump or horn over each eye. When it noticed our presence it let out a high pitched screech or some sort of bird chirping, that pierced my ears, and then took off.

Derick and his friend returned at once to Derick's house to fetch a camera, then returned to the location of their encounter and photographed the creature's three-toed, 2-in-diameter tracks (with a Marlboro Red cigarette placed alongside them in some photos for scale purposes). Derick also stated that he subsequently heard of other sightings, and discovered that a friend had actually photographed one such creature. Following some persuasion, the latter friend allowed Derick to send scans of those photos, together with his own track photos and July 1998 sighting account, to Ron, who in turn showed them to fellow American cryptozoologist Chad Arment, who has a particular interest in American mystery reptiles. However, as the photos showed little detail, even when magnified, Ron and Chad agreed that their subjects could easily be dinosaur models.

Nevertheless, Chad remained sufficiently intrigued to email Derick and state that if such beasts were indeed real, better evidence would be needed in order to confirm this. He didn't expect to receive a reply, but in April 2000 he did, in the form of an email enclosing two scans of the truly remarkable photograph opening this present ShukerNature blog article and also reproduced below:

Photograph allegedly depicting a shot mini-rex or 'river lizard' held by an unidentified figure - emailed by 'Derick' to Chad Arment in April 2000 (copyright owner unknown/identity and current location of 'Derick' unknown so could not be contacted; thus reproduced here for educational/review purposes only, on a strictly Fair Use basis)

Referring to the creature in this photo as a 'river lizard' (but which is presumably the same type as the mini-rex that he saw), Derick stated that it had taken him some time to obtain scans of it, and that he didn't know when or specifically where it had been snapped, only "somewhere" in Colorado. As this creature does not resemble any species currently recognised by science, Chad later attempted to email Derick for further details, but received an automated reply that Derick's email address was no longer in operation, and has never heard from him again.

However, Chad has learnt from another source that the term 'river dinosaur' has apparently been used in relation to such creatures, and even that an individual who had previously collected Colorado reptiles for some of Chad's friends working in the pet trade had also offered to capture for them some 'river dinosaurs' (whose description compared closely to the appearance of the 'river lizard' in the above photo supplied by Derick). Unfortunately, Chad's friends had been forced to decline this exciting offer due to lack of funds.

The 'river lizard' photograph supplied by Derick has been floating around online for many years now, and has attracted much attention and numerous comments on the many websites where it has appeared, with the consensus seeming to be that it is a hoax, although this has never been confirmed. (I have conducted several Google-image searches, concentrating variously upon the whole image, the section featuring the person, the section featuring the creature, etc, but all to no avail.) However, it certainly contains some anomalous features, especially in relation to the creature's appearance, as commented upon by Chad in an account of this and other bipedal 'dinosaur' sightings reported from the U.S.A. (North American Biofortean Review, vol. 2, #2, 2000).

For example: if the 'river lizard' had only recently been shot when this photograph was snapped, and bearing in mind that recently-dead reptiles are normally very limp, and also bearing in mind that it was being held vertically, why is its tail curving inward rather than simply hanging straight down? And why is its mouth gaping open rather than being held closed, or at least nearly so, as one would expect under the above-listed conditions? As Chad also pointed out, very convincing life-like rubber models of dinosaurs can be readily obtained nowadays, so we cannot be sure that the 'river lizard' in the photo was ever a living entity anyway.

And even if it was once alive, thanks to the photo-manipulation software that was already available back in 2000 there is no certainty that this creature's appearance hasn't been profoundly modified digitally from whatever it was originally. Moreover, the entire photograph might conceivably be a cleverly-constructed melange, i.e. an original photo of a person holding a gun into which a second, digitally-manipulated photo of some animal has been deftly incorporated. Certainly, whenever I've looked at it, I've been struck by just how very odd, how very unnatural its image seems to be, and I don't just mean the bizarre appearance of the 'river lizard' itself but the whole image. Even the person's face is so obscured by the shadow of their hat that I'm not exactly certain whether they are male or female. But returning to the 'river lizard': having spent a lifetime observing animals in photos and in the living state, at the risk of being accused of sounding unscientific and overly reliant upon gut instinct it just doesn't look 'right' to me.

In particular, the incongruous hind limbs sported by this creature seem entirely out of place on its body, their curiously flat, disproportionately large, and flared, oddly triangular (rather than oval) haunches looking not only unrealistic but also as if they have been crudely glued (or photo-applied) there rather than being a natural feature of its anatomy. And when viewed in magnified form, the lower portion of each of these hind limbs seems to be segmented, rather like that of an arthropod invertebrate. Very strange indeed. Also worrying is the artificial appearance of the creature's open mouth, almost as if the lower jaw has been manually added...

Thus I consider it plausible that this 'river lizard' photo is indeed a hoax, my line of thought being that its mystifying creature constitutes some form of manufactured composite (either physical or photo-manipulated), perhaps a much-modified dead monitor lizard, sub-adult crocodile, or even dinosaur model, for instance. Moreover, if my reasoning so far is correct, then I further suggest that the creature's bizarre-looking hind limbs as seen in the photo are fake, that they have been seemingly less than skilfully attached to (or superimposed upon) its body, and that they presumably replaced whatever hind limbs it may have originally possessed, this substitution having been done to enhance even further the contrived exotic, unfamiliar appearance of this creature for this photo.

Having said all of that, however, this is nothing more than speculation on my part, and I am well aware that I could be entirely wrong, with the 'river lizard' potentially being a bona fide cryptid carcase after all (if so, I would be only too happy to be wrong!). So I'd be most interested to receive any comments, views, or additional information concerning it from other investigators and readers.

Speaking of which: one American cryptozoologist who has investigated this and other such cryptids with particular zeal, and success, since 2001 is Nick Sucik, who duly published his very thought-provoking findings in a chapter devoted to this subject in a most interesting compendium edited by Chad Arment and entitled Cryptozoology and the Investigation of Lesser-Known Mystery Animals (2006). As will soon be discovered when reading Nick's chapter, a fair number of roughly consistent cases have been documented from a range of U.S. localities over the years, but with particular frequency across Colorado. The size of such beasts may differ, as may eyewitness recollections of colouration, but by and large the same image of a miniature bipedal dinosaurian creature with sturdy hind legs, much smaller, delicate forelegs, a long study tail, small but very sharp teeth, and bare skin crops up time and again, with eyewitnesses comparing what they have seen to certain fossil theropods (at least in basic outline), including T. rex and Compsognathus (the latter small theropod being very comparable size to most of the mini-rex specimens reported).

Life-sized models of Compsognathus (© Dr Karl Shuker)

Nick's chapter contains far too many cases and far too much information to review comprehensively here, but I found the following cases to be especially interesting. His chapter opens with a detailed account of a mini-rex sighting that occurred one warm July evening in 2000 as three women of successive generations were driving along a country road near the rural community of Yellow Jacket, 15 miles north of Cortez, Colorado. The creature entered their headlights from the side, and the driver braked, thinking that it was a fawn, but when the headlights lit it up, its two astonished eyewitnesses in the front of the vehicle realised that it was something very different indeed. As described by Nick in his account of their description of it:

Its body appeared smooth, devoid of fur or feathers. Its height perhaps was three feet and the small head was bent downward on a slender neck. The creature ran on two skinny legs with its tiny forelimbs held out in front of its body as it ran. Its body tapered down into a lengthy tail that, combined with the head and neck, made it about 5 feet long. The movement of the animal was noted as graceful, the head not bouncing as it ran.

The animal quickly passed in front of them and disappeared into the darkness.

Its eyewitnesses were shocked by what they had seen, but after they had regained their composure one of them joked that it must have escaped from some local Jurassic Park. Although a light-hearted remark, it is nonetheless telling, as it serves well in underlining just how very dinosaurian the creature must have appeared to them – as opposed to rather more mundane alternatives, such as an exotic escapee from captivity (like a wallaby, but which is furry and jumps, not runs; or a rhea or emu, which do run, but are feathered).

Certain lizards as known to adopt a bipedal running gait on occasion. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Australian frilled lizard Chlamydosaurus kingii, up to 2.75 ft long and which has often been likened to a raptor when sprinting bipedally. So have North America's collared lizards (genus Crotaphytus), which measure around 1 ft long. In South America, the basilisks (genus Basiliscus), up to 2.5 ft long, can do the same too, even sprinting bipedally across stretches of water, and these are also commonly kept as pets in the U.S.A., so specimens may escape into the wild here on occasion. Indeed, the description of one bright green, crested, 2-ft-long, lengthy-tailed bipedal "baby dinosaur" allegedly caught then released by an 11-year-old boy in 1981 alongside some railway tracks in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, sounds just like one of these lizards, which by then were becoming quite popular as exotic pets in the States.

Basilisk lizard running bipedally (© Ryan Somma/Wikipedia CC ATT 2.0 GEN licence)

However, there are some notably behavioural and morphological differences between such lizards as these and the more typical, much more mysterious mini-rex. For instance, none of these lizards are habitually bipedal, whereas the mini-rex apparently is. Moreover, their forelimbs are held laterally when they run bipedally, whereas those of the mini-rex are held in front of its body when it runs bipedally. Also, these lizards are smaller than all but the smallest mini-rexes on record, whereas some of the bigger examples of the latter cryptid are at least the height of an adult human. True, certain of the large monitor lizards are popular pets that often escape, can grow several feet long, and can run bipedally, but only for very short periods, not in the habitual and very rapid manner described by eyewitnesses for all mini-rexes, even the biggest ones.

One 'not-so-mini' mini-rex was reported by a lady called Myrtle Snow, who seems blessed with an extraordinary ability to encounter these mystery reptiles, judging at least from the fact that she claims to have done so on several occasions throughout her life in and around Pagosa Springs, Colorado, as documented by Nick. Perhaps the most dramatic incident described by her allegedly took place during or around the late 1930s when, following the loss of several lambs to an unknown predator, a Pagosa Springs rancher armed a shepherd and asked him to guard the remaining flock. This he did, very successfully – by shooting dead a large, mysterious creature deemed to be the predator, whose carcase was then placed on a sled and hauled back to the ranch by one of its Apache ranch hands, using a team of mules.

After being deposited inside a barn there, this specimen was viewed by many local farmers, including Snow's grandfather, who took Snow (then still a girl) with him, so that she could see it too. In 1982, following its publishing an article on the subject of whether prehistoric dinosaurs had been cold-blooded, Snow wrote to the Rocky Mountain Empire Magazine (the Sunday supplement of the Denver Post newspaper), describing all of her alleged encounters with supposed modern-day dinosaurs, including her close-up viewing of the deceased mystery beast shot by the shepherd. She described it as:

...about 7 feet tall, gray in color, had a head like a snake, short front legs with claws that resembled chicken feet, large stout back legs and a long tail.

Curiously, when interviewed more recently by Nick, Snow also claimed that its body had been covered in fine grey hairs.

If so, then parsimoniously this tends towards a mammalian rather than a reptilian identity for the creature, though I am aware that certain fossil pterosaurs were hairy (but these 'hairs' were quite different structurally from true mammalian hairs and are called pycnofibers) and that the plumes of certain feathered fossil dinosaurs, e.g. Sinosauropteryx, were filamentous and therefore quite hair-like. Snow stated that the only observer who was apparently familiar with this extraordinary creature was the Apache ranch hand, who claimed that it was what elders on his reservation referred to as a moon cow, and which they said had been seen periodically in the past but were nowadays rare.

Restoration of Sinosauropteryx with hair-like plumes, depicted upon a Kyrgyzstan postage stamp issued in 2001 (public domain)

Worth noting here is that although the name 'moon cow' seems strange, it just so happens that a very similar name, 'moon calf', is a rural term used widely across Europe for an aborted, teratological foetus of a cow (and sometimes that of other farm animals too), deriving from the once-popular folk belief that these malformed creatures resulted from a sinister effect of the moon. It has also been used more generally to refer to anything monstrous or grotesque in form. Could this distinctive term have reached North America with the original Western settlers and subsequently become incorporated into Amerindian parlance too, or might the notion of lunar influence upon the occurrence of malformed creatures have simply arisen independently on both sides of the Atlantic? In view of the creature's alleged hairiness, I cannot help but wonder whether this was its true identity, i.e. a malformed mammal of some kind.

Ironically, there may have been a chance of finding out for sure, because according to Snow the creature's carcase was packed in ice and sent by train to the Denver Museum for examination and identification. When this claim was pursued on Nick's behalf by an archivist at the museum, however, no record of any such specimen ever even being received there could be found. Conversely, what had definitely been sent to this museum and formally examined there, as Nick discovered, was a box containing two alleged 'baby dinosaur' skeletons, one having been found inside a mineshaft and the other in a cave near to it, in Cortez, Colorado. Such creatures were apparently familiar to the local Navajo people, and during the early 1960s one of the skeletons was displayed at Cortez Museum. It was following the museum's eventual closure that the box was sent to Denver Museum, but when the skeletons were examined there they were found to be composites, constructed from the bones of various different species of mammal – in other words, they were hoaxes.

Perhaps the most remarkable mini-rex claims of all, however, are a couple attesting to the alleged capture of living specimens, one of which was even supposedly kept as a pet for a while by its captors. This latter case featured testimony given to one of Nick's correspondents by his aunts. They claimed that some time between the end of the Great Depression in America (late 1930s) and the early 1940s, while following the crop harvests from state to state as they travelled out west, what they called a 'baby dinosaur' and which seemed to them to resemble a tiny T. rex would come to their camp when their mother was cooking outside. One day, they succeeded in catching it, and afterwards kept it inside an old bird cage for a time, feeding it on leftovers, and finding that it would eat both meat and vegetables. According to Nick's account of this fascinating little animal:

It was described as having sharp little hooks on its hands and very sharp teeth, like that of a kitten. Its skin was like a lizard's but felt warm. It never tried to bite or scratch but it did not like being held. The animal behaved "like a tame squirrel." During the time they kept their pet, it grew from the size of a kitten to roughly the size of a cat, by which time it was far too big for the cage.

Eventually their family had to move elsewhere in order to follow the crops, so their father told them to leave their pet behind. Of especial interest here is that when the aunts first told their nephew about their most unusual former pet, back in the 1970s, they remembered that when it ran it "flattened out, stretched its head out front, tail out back and was really fast". As pointed out by Nick, whereas this running posture is widely accepted nowadays by palaeontologists for bipedal fossil dinosaurs, it wasn't back in the 1970s. So if the aunts had been making up their story, they were remarkably prescient concerning this particular facet of dinosaur behaviour. Just a coincidence?

The other case of reputed mini-rex capture came to light when a lady wrote to Nick to inform him that her three boys had once caught such a creature in New Mexico. The specimen in question was unusually large but slow-moving, and when they caught it they could see that it was old, with fainter body colouration than other, faster specimens that they had previously seen (but had never succeeded in capturing). Its body alone measured 20-24 in, i.e. not including its lengthy tail, but after admiring this impressive creature for a while, the boys released it. Interestingly, they referred to it as a mountain boomer, a colloquial name normally applied to collared lizards.

A common collared lizard Crotaphytus collaris (© Ejohnsonboulder/Wikipedia CCBY-SA 3.0 licence)

What could the mini-rex be? As with so many cryptids, it may well be a non-existent composite, i.e. it has been 'created' by the erroneous amalgamation of reports featuring various totally different species. The smaller individuals may indeed be nothing more than lizards sprinting bipedally, yet species like the collared lizards are so common and familiar that it seems difficult to believe that people living in locations where they occur would not recognise them for what they were. Perhaps, however, some mini-rex reports involve less familiar lizard species that are currently not known by scientists to be capable of bipedal locomotion. Yet the posture and habitual bipedalism reported for these cryptids do not accord well with lizards anyway, regardless of species.

So is it possible that somewhere in the more rural regions of Colorado and elsewhere in the United States there really are bona fide 21^st-Century bipedal dinosaurs (albeit of quite modest dimensions), sprinting along in blissful ignorance of their official demise 66 million years ago? It seems highly unlikely. Yet there is surely little doubt that something that corresponds at least ostensibly with such an identity is indeed out there.

The last word on this most tantalising of topics should go to its foremost investigator, the indefatigable Nick Sucik, whom I have known for many years and greatly admire for his diligent, meticulous, and, above all else, tenacious pursuit of answers to cryptozoological riddles from all around the globe:

...such tales, whether they be true or not, add to the folklore of what our world would be like if dinosaurs lurked in secret and only stepped out into the clearing momentarily to be seen. If there were or are such things, they perhaps would possess the safety of being too unbelievable.

An excellent point – for there can be no doubt that it is this precise quality of unbelievability which serves so many cryptids so effectively in keeping them out of the clutches of scientific recognition. After all, who is going to admit to having seen creatures that sound too unlikely to be real, and who is going to seek them even if their eyewitnesses do admit to having seen them? Thank Heavens, therefore, for the Nick Suciks of this world, who choose dispassion over disbelief. May their zeal be rewarded one day with the discovery of those cryptids that they seek.

Early draft of front cover for my forthcoming book Still In Search Of Prehistoric Survivors, to be published in 2016 (©) Dr Karl Shuker/William M. Rebsamen/Coachwhip Publications)