Annual Estes Park Bigfoot events - fun and chats with Mireya Mayor

 Bigfoot BBQ and Bigfoot Festival

Estes Park, CO

April 24 and 25, 2026

I always love this get-together. I don’t expect to hear compelling new evidence about Bigfoot, but the camaraderie and atmosphere is wonderful. There’s no better place to study the world’s most complicated primates, Homo sapiens. 

This year we had Doctor Mireya Mayor and two of her colleagues from Expedition Bigfoot (Bryce Johnson and Biko Wright) as celebrity guests, along with comedy duo Bigfoot & Jeff. I normally only watch EB when there’s an interesting guest or some unusually intriguing claim about evidence, as it gets a little slow watching people squinting at thermal images or reacting to noises in the dark. However, as a science writer interested in zoology and cryptozoology, I didn't want to miss the chance to talk to Mayor. She's taken considerable flak for being one of the few degreed scientists who spend time on the topic. Scientist or entertainer? By her account, she is a scientist who knows how to make good TV and enjoys doing it. (By the way, there are no plans she knows of to do more EB episodes.)

In person, Mayor comes off as sincere. I’ve no special ability to detect when people are misleading me, but we talked several times, and I didn’t pick up any BS. Similar to Finding Bigfoot biologist Ranae Holland two years ago at this gathering, she didn't convince me Bigfoot existed but did convince me she believes there is a real phenomenon worthy of scientific exploration. 

The annual Bigfoot BBQ, which is a bit pricey but always tasty (loved the dessert, folks) was the night of April 24th. I sat at a table of people from the sponsoring wireless company and said hi to numerous people, including the Apache family at the next table, I recalled from earlier visits. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. I spent some time chatting with The Cryptid Crew podcast team, giving them a copy of Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist’s Library and receiving a cool keychain and a promise of future discussions about being a guest. 

The celebrity guests (including Bigfoot) introduced themselves, then went to the good part: Q and A. 

I should mention we were asked not to record for copyright reasons, though photos were encouraged, so this post is based on my recollections and the notes I took. Most of the questions, not surprisingly, went to Mayor. For what it’s worth, she answered everything, never refusing or deflecting a question. I didn’t get to ask all the follow-up questions that came to mind: Mayor was generous to me with her time, but there were always other people awaiting their turns. 

I asked her at the banquet how, given that she has done field investigations of primates that took her into the forest or jungle for months, she balanced that established methodology with the needs of a TV show. [I have appeared on cryptozoology-related TV twice, so I know some basics, but have never been on an extended expedition.]  She said that she has been out in the bush for 10 months out of a year, and she’d love to do that with Bigfoot. However, the TV show’s schedule and funding allow only four weeks at a time in the field. She noted this was considerably longer than other shows of this sort [Forrest Galante's Extinct or Alive? spends two weeks looking for an animal, Finding Bigfoot much less], and they have returned to the same location to follow up. They have been to a spot in Kentucky twice and Washington state several times. So, she feels they are getting as close as circumstances allow to the methods she’s used studying chimps, gorillas, South American monkeys, and lemurs. She’d become used to doing field work with a camera present for Nat Geo and other sponsors: despite initially turning down EB, she felt comfortable with the program once convinced the subject was worthwhile.

I asked all the guests whether the new documentary had changed th

eir minds about the Patterson-Gimlin film. Mayor stated she had not seen Chasing Bigfoot and would wait until she saw it to judge the results. She added, smiling, that her show was charged $65,000 every time they shared a clip from the film and wondered whether they were due a refund. She did say she knew Bob Gimlin well and he stood by his story. Johnson and Wright said essentially the same things. 

One questioner asked the panelists about the weirdest event they remembered. Wright described a brief sighting that looked like a big biped, after which they found a few footprints. I can’t recall Johnson’s answer. Mayor described the episode in Kentucky where the initial findings for eDNA came back with many similarities to chimpanzee DNA, and she was unable to find any stories of escaped or released chimpanzees in the area. (This story got stranger the next day: keep reading.)

I felt sorry for her when the next question was asked. A woman said, “My husband is infatuated with you,” and they both wanted to know how she stays looking good in the field. After only a moment for an embarrassed grin and “Oh, my,” Mayor replied smoothly that she had always been a “girly girl” who did indeed take lipstick and mascara into the field and try to keep her hair in decent shape. She does not have an assistant or a beautician, just tricks picked up over the years. She mentioned her time long ago as a cheerleader with the Miami Dolphins, noting that the team had had some bad years in her absence. [As a Dolphins fan, that’s putting it mildly: maybe she took all their good luck with her.] 

An interesting response to another question: Mayor said her team does not try to be as silent and otherwise unnoticeable in the woods as hunters do. They believe they are pursuing a curious primate which may come in closer to look at intruders. She mentioned, without going into detail, that she had seen non-zoological phenomena like orbs, and didn’t know what to think of them, but honesty required not simply dismissing the topic. (Holland said basically the same thing at this event a couple of years ago.)

Saturday included the festival at the park, which despite some threat of rain had more people and more vendors than I’d noticed on my last visit. The local band in the afternoon was good. Major guests did separate presentations at the Park Theater as well as staffing booths where they answered questions and sold photos. 

In Mayor’s presentation “Science and Bigfoot,” she provided some interesting information on the show. When she was first contacted, during an expedition to Madagascar, she said no. She knew little about Bigfoot and thought other scientists would no longer take her seriously if she did the show. When asked again, she asked the late Jane Goodall for advice. Goodall, she said, responded, “Who gives a s--- what other people think?” and encouraged her to do it. 

Producers told her “they were serious about doing science” and wanted her to be on the show to do the science properly. The way the show is edited and broadcast will not make anyone think of a BBC Wildlife documentary, but she maintained that everything shown happened. There was some practical joking between shooting, but no events were invented for the cameras. I will note in her favor that it would have been easier to look “scientific” if she’d avoided talking about orbs or a puzzling event (the questioner pinned this down as Season 2 Episode 11) where a shape appeared to be a shadow and then a thermal image without ever being captured as a solid object. 

Mayor said she approached the quest the way she had for other filmed expeditions where she was looking for rare primates that didn’t have recent photographs or specimens. Of course she mentioned that one such trip had netted a new species, the pygmy mouse lemur, whose impossibly adorable photo kept popping up on screen when her presentation glitched. 

She opened the presentation with the question, “What if we are not alone?”  She mentioned other animals that had been overlooked by science, giving commonly cited examples including the gorilla, giant squid, etc. Granting that she is a primatologist, she made one mistake here, mentioning seeing squid “light shows,” which indicates she conflated the giant and Humboldt squid.

[Suggestion to Mayor and other crypto presenters: go with more recent examples of discoveries! From 1976 on, the megamouth shark, saola (aka the Vu Quang ox), two or more species of muntjac deer, a tree kangaroo, and several beaked whales are among the sizable animals available, and that’s sticking to wholly new animals without going into taxonomic recognition of previsouly known populations like Rice’s and Omura’s whales and the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis).]

Dr. Mayor never said she believed Bigfoot existed, but that the question was about evidence and not belief. She said that some scientists can be “closed-minded” about particular topics, still a relatively mild statement compared to the denouncing by some cryptozoologists. She was surprised to learn how interested Goodall was in the topic and that she’d followed information about Bigfoot and similar creatures from around the world. Goodall, in a clip from EB, suggested the animal was smart enough to be scared of humans and hide bodies, a controversial idea even among cryptozoologists. Mayor said the PG film was not definitive evidence but could not be casually dismissed. She ran a clip from the show of an analyst talking about the film and added that she thought there was still analysis to be done on it.

Mayor said her most intriguing Bigfoot discovery in the field was three apparent primate nests of different sizes close together. She emphasized that these were not just areas where the plants were crushed down, but true nests carefully arranged for comfort. She was certain they had been made by a creature with hands.

On DNA evidence, she said it was frustrating that all the evidence so far was either inconclusive or contaminated. She made the interesting statement, one I’ve not heard before, that many researchers are selfish about keeping their results and their DNA samples to themselves. This makes it difficult to compare “unidentified” samples between researchers to see if they have any consistency with each other. She talked about looking over footprints with the late Jeff Meldrum and being impressed with his idea of a flexible midfoot.

Returning to the Kentucky chimpanzee problem, she described how the evidence was originally sequenced by UCLA’s environmental DNA lab. The scientist Mayor talked to there was initially extremely curious, but when Mayor called her with follow-up questions, she said her boss had told her to stop talking about the subject to protect the reputation of the program. I asked Mayor if she’d ruled out any practical jokes or planted evidence by her costars or crew. She insisted there was no chance of that, and the support team did not know where they were going and could not have planted something in advance. She maintains it’s a mystery to her how that DNA got there.

Mayor posted a map showing sightings in all 50 states. I asked her if such a range was possible and what she thought the range of a possible Bigfoot species actually was. She felt that it was quite possible for a primate species to spread itself over the continent, using the example of Indigenous humans. [I’m not sure how valid that comparison is, since early Americans eventually numbered in the millions and left all kinds of evidence of their passing, not to mention they survived despite genocidal persecution and are still here.] She noted the strong match to black bear ranges and the possibility of bears being mistaken for Bigfoot. This also, she said, showed a match to areas where the environment could support a large omnivorous mammal. In response to a question about diet, she said others had reported Bigfoot hunting animals, but she’d seen evidence only of plant-eating. 

On other kinds of evidence, Mayor initially dismissed “tree structures” but, over time, thought she saw repeated patterns in them. To her, it appears some are made with considerable effort by a large creature with hands. She was asked about the reported phenomenon of upside-down trees—that is, trees which appear to have actually been pulled from the soil and replanted upside down. She said she did not know the origin, but she had seen such trees in Alaska in a place where it seemed impossible for loggers with the needed equipment to play a joke. [Why a hypothetical Bigfoot would do this is another question.]  

Mayor was also asked about people who claim to have exchanged gifts with Bigfoot. She said she had not experienced that but thought it was reasonable given known ape behavior.

She was also asked about “high strangeness,” a touchy topic for any scientist and one those of us who confine cryptozoology to physical animals would rather did not come up. She stated she had seen apparent lights or orbs on thermal imaging, but when she turned a flashlight on the same spot, there was nothing visible. I have no expertise in the subject of thermal imagers and cannot comment on whether this might indicate equipment problems or anomalies. Ranae Holland attributed one such incident to reflections from owls’ eyes. Mayor simply said it was unexplained. 

Mayor never said anything like, “Bigfoot is real.” Rather, she concluded there is some phenomenon in North American woods which is currently “not accounted for.”

So, what do I think? I did not come away any more convinced of the existence of Bigfoot. I can't get past the absence of a fossil record, bones, or other hard evidence, no matter how sincere some witnesses are. I did come away believing that Mayor is being genuine. I talked to her coworkers only very briefly and cannot offer a viewpoint on them. I was more impressed by Mayor in person that than by the version filtered through Facebook threads and publications, and for that matter through the filter of her own TV show’s editing. She was adamant that every word and reaction we see from her on TV, even in the controversial first season, was sincere. We discussed my Lake Iliamna writing including Apex Predator project (she was curious about the cryptid mystery there and was encouraging), she accepted a copy of Of Books and Beasts, and we promised to talk again in the future.

So that’s the Bigfoot Festival for 2026. I had interesting conversations and learned a lot as usual. I limited my purchases, which have sometimes gone overboard, to Bigfoot socks and the calendar from the EB booth, which I may hang in my office if I decide move Ranae Holland’s 2026 Bigfoot calendar. I hope to be back next year!

Fiction Review - Red Empire by Jonathan Maberry

 Red Empire

Jonathan Maberry

St. Martin's Griffin, 2026, 528pp.

As a science and technology guy, a historian, and a lover of good adventure and a man with a military background, I've never found a series that draws me in the way the adventures of Joe Ledger do. The deep dives into history and psychology add to its allure.

Red Empire is the most complex and ambitious novel in the Ledger series, and one of the most gripping. Still grappling with the loss of his family, Joe is surprised, to put it mildly, when his seemingly supernatural nemesis Nicodemus visits him. Nick is apparently dying but determined to see a last plan through and torment Joe and especially Mr. Church as much as possible on his way out. Joe hasn't begun to figure out all the angles when he has to raid a castle and stop a bioweapon (the kind of event also known as "Tuesday" to RTI). He finds himself holding threads to the most dangerous global threat he's ever faced and to the identity of the mysterious Church.

All the allies and enemies are here, and the main adventure is interspersed with glimpses of the activities of Nicodemus and Church, bound together by fate and choice, through the centuries. I'd guessed only about one and half steps of the complex journey that led Church from being a semi-ordinary man to the most intriguing character in thriller fiction. Maberry has referred to alchemy many times, and the long quest for the elixir of life had mixed results that echo through the centuries.  Church is older than I thought and has a much more interesting origin. There's a reason he says cryptic things like "The war is the war." In a book with many interesting threads, this is the most compelling.

Meanwhile, Barrier, the UK equivalent to the old DMS, is under a type of attack they thought impossible, isolating their London HQ and flooding it with an updated version of the Black Plague. But Nicodemus explains in a very short, pivotal chapter, he's running a much bigger game. If Church is always playing a complex game of chess, Nick is playing it on the quantum level. Barrier is only a side quest to the purpose Nicodemus is pursuing. Joe and Church have a terrible time trying to figure out the causes and objectives of his stage management. Almost anyone in these novels can die (except our favorite war dog, Ghost), and many of them do. Joe is pushed harder than ever, trying to solve mysteries, fight superior enemies, and do it before he dies of the disease ravaging his body. Along the way we have philosophical questions, moments of humanity (big bruiser Bunny's contact with a plague victim is unforgettable) and new views of old friends like Toys and Bug. We also get the cutting-edge science and medicine, cool gadgets, and lots of white-knuckle combat.

Red Empire will wrap up many storylines, explain many conundrums, and set the stage for a quite different world. Maberry has never been afraid to blow things up in this series, story-wise and literally, and it’s really impressive when a series this mature can still leave the reader with no idea what will happen next.

It's not quite perfect. It wraps up a little too fast, and it’s unclear how some bad guys evaded what should be extensive vetting to pop up in unfortunate places.  Also, as far as I can figure it out, we have a helicopter flight taking an hour in one direction and over three in the return.  But followers of this series will find this a very satisfying multi-course meal where even the garnishes are nourishing, and the desserts and wines are sumptuous. Clear your day(s) and dig in. You won't want to pause.

What is Conservation Worth?

Looking at the conservation of nature in terms of dollars and return on investment is not intuitive, but it is important. While the value of a beautiful sunset seen through clean air is infinite, the resources to ensure it exists ARE finite and subject to competing priorities. Some people argue we can't afford to protect nature as much as we want when we also have to feed the poor, provide health care to the sick, and support everything from fire departments to prisons to schools. To demonstrate that a simple "either-or" approach is misleading and inaccurate, The Nature Conservancy has worked it out. The benefits range "From helping to protect communities from floods and wildfires to improving our physical and mental health." The authors argue "Protecting, restoring and enhancing nature is an essential way to support thriving communities and economies in the United States." In other words, the money is well spent - in ways that can be quantified.

Drop a link to your elected representatives.

https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/who-we-are/how-we-work/policy/natures-dividends/

While we're at it, what is the state of nature in the USA? The government is supposed to provide an annual assessment. It will shock no one that this isn't being done. Fortunately, non-government contributors have filled the gap. Here's the draft assessment. 

A local example, Rocky Mountain National Park. Image: NPS

Fiction review - Fourth Wing

Fourth Wing

by Rebecca Yarros

Entangled: Red Tower Books, 2024, 544 pp. (paperback) 

I don't do novels in this blog very often, and when I do they are about space or cryptozoology. But Fourth Wing has so much buzz around it that I, a fan of classic Tolkien-type fantasy fiction, decided to see what the fuss was about before the streaming adaptation hits. 

In real-life countries at war, people who fail in flight training serve in other areas. In Navarre, dragon riders who don’t make a merciless cut die uselessly – if they are not shanked by competing cadets, which is legal in this best-selling romantasy.  Rebecca Yarros uses this and surprise romantic eruptions to amp up the tension, but the illogic nagged me all through Fourth Wing. It’s an unfortunate flaw in a tale with exciting action and some interesting ideas about how dragons and humans work together. Neither species’ magic is adequate to defend their homes from the encroaching gryphon-riders: effective magic requires synergy. That’s a good foundational idea for a story that mixes modernity and classic fantasy, though the execution is uneven. On the one hand, we have a compelling main character in the frail, unwilling dragon cadet Violet. A great group of friends, a nasty clique of enemies, and a varied group of dragons are developed alongside her. On the other, the medieval dragon college has a weight room, sex is vividly over-described in modern wording, and it’s unclear  why Violet’s mom, a hardass general, has forced her into a program almost sure to kill her.

It’s not a spoiler that Violet beats the odds, and it’s tense fun to watch her use brains, luck, and allies to just barely survive while more prepared cadets bite the dust. Her bonds with the dragons are equally complex, and she’s not the only person surprised at how they develop. I figured out early on that the high command has some shady hidden motives, but the reveal was more dramatic than I expected. Be prepared for anyone to be a liar – about missions, the history of the conflict, and who is allied with who. Violet has to make choices on the fly (often literally) as her worldview is wrenched apart. Yarros has some good points about control of history.

I see the appeal of the story but didn’t like it as much as I wanted to. The main romance seems based wholly on unwise sexual attraction turned up to 11, and not much of the military detail or organization makes sense (for example, everyone is combat, medical, or Scribe – where are the support forces like supply)? A military school that should foster healthy rivalry but MUST breed mutual trust and instead suborns outright murder makes no sense. The common penalty for failures and violations is death - again, insane in a country fighting for its life.  There’s enough good stuff that a lot of readers will continue the series, but I’m afraid not me. 

Anniversary of Explorer 1, America's First Satellite

Fifty-eight years ago today, America's first satellite, Explorer 1, roared into space from Cape Canaveral atop a Jupiter C booster (a heavily modified Redstone missile with three solid-fuel upper stages). The satellite made the first measurements of cosmic radiation and led to the discovery, confirmed by Explorer 3, of the Van Allen radiation belts.

Erika Maurer (nee' Lishock) and I are proud of our contribution to chronicling this even in our book The First Space Race (Texas A&M University Press, 2004)

Excerpt from review in the military professional journal PARAMETERS:
From PARAMETERS, the Army War College Quarterly
Available at: http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/06summer/sum-rev.htm

The First Space Race: Launching the World’s First Satellites. By Matt Bille and Erika Lishock. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. 214 pages. $40.00 ($19.95 paper). Reviewed by Dr. James R. Downey, Professor of Science and Technology, US Army War College.

"....Matt Bille and Erika Lishock address this early history with their book titled The First Space Race. Packed with copious details and several first-person accounts, the book provides an excellent understanding of how the space race began and the effects it had on the world. In particular, for the national security audience the book provides a historical insight into the developing competition between the United States and the former Soviet Union, such that where we are today can reasonably be traced to the race to space....
In sum, this book provides a superb insight into the early space race and the overall effects this race had on both the United States and the Soviet Union. Understanding how efforts in space began is a lens into the space programs we have today, both military and civilian. Matt Bille and Erika Lishock’s The First Space Race reveals the story of this world-changing journey."

Matt Bille is a writer, aerospace consultant, naturalist, and historian based in Colorado Springs.  He has written over 20 professional papers and articles on space history and is a member of the History Committee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics  His scientific thriller Apex Predator will be out in 2026 from Blackstone Publishing. He blogs on science and space topics at https://mattbille.blogspot.com/

Dana Stabenow's best novel: Though Not Dead

 Though Not Dead

by Dana Stabenow

Minotaur, 2011, 464pp.

I've been a fan of Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak novels for nearly twenty years now. Her Aleut private investigator Kate is tough, smart, resourceful, passionate in every sense of the word, and prone to the occasional stupid mistake that gets her shot or bopped on the head (her MRI must be frightening). Her canine companion Mutt is the star of the rich supporting ensemble. 

My mother Jane Bille, now 90, is every bit as much of a fan. As a novelist of much lesser gifts, I told Dana when we met at a signing that she had taught me two things: how to put humor into life and death moments, and how to use the land as a character.  (She humbly said of the latter, "Who's really good is CJ Box.") Dana has inscribed books to Mom and once featured her picture in a newsletter. and I will always appreciate that.

We've had 23 Kate novels by now. While there are no bad entries, which is tough for even the best writers (even Robert B. Parker had Stormy Weather), the masterpiece is this ambitious tale from 2011. 

Stabenow's gifts hit a peak here: not that she has dropped off, but every writer has one novel you recommend to every interested reader. For first-time Kate acquaintances I suggest the funniest novel, Breakup, but Though Not Dead is the book she can really hang her hat on.  

This complex tale of Alaskan history, faith, tribal allegiance, family, and love opens after the death of the Park's 89-year-old king of cantankerousness, Old Sam. Throughout the book are episodes from Sam's life showing what forged such a unique man and how he affected the history of his family and community, and even Alaska. Reading this book alone could give you an outline of the state's history.  On a parallel track we learn a lot more about Jim Chopin, although Kate is such a star as main character that Jim's story never holds me as riveted.  Sam's Army service in the Aleutian campaign in WWII alongside one Dashiell Hammet - who was, in fact, there - is a clever insertion that helps drive the plot in unexpected directions. 

Kate's pursuit of the clues Sam left to a stolen religious icon once central to a tribe's identity lead her through the lives of her ancestors and some unwelcome findings about her living relatives. She goes on a treasure hunt, nearly gets killed (of course), meets all kinds of interesting people, and ends knowing much better who she really is.  The Alaskan winter and the stunning scenery around Kate's region and state provides as strong and varied a canvas as such a story could have.

I have of course read the books since this one, and all are good, but only Bad Blood is really at this level, and I can't imagine even Dana will ever top Though Not Dead. I want to see her keep trying, though.

Matt Bille is a writer and historian living in Colorado Springs. His most recent novel, Death by Legend, is a gripping tale of horrors loose in modern-day Los Angeles.  The next, the scientific thriller Apex Predator, will be out from Blackstone this time next year. 

See www.mattbilleauthor.com

 

Thoughts on Professional Publications

 Professional publications are an underrated part of career building and job searching.

The strongest possibilities I'm currently pursuing in my job search are from people who saw my publications, or saw me present to a conference. A lot of people at the lower corporate levels, or without a Ph.D., assume they can't publish their work yet. Not so. Anyone with a good, fresh idea and the needed research and writing skills can find a conference or journal to submit to. Check your organization's policies on clearance procedures, conference funding, etc. At my two major corporate consulting jobs, I moved the needle considerably on employee publishing.
If you've got a great idea but need help, look for co-authors in your organization. In a large organization, it's highly likely you'll find subject matter experts to help flesh out your concept. It's often wise to invite a client or a senior leader in your organization to be part of the author team. (The latter can help considerably if you're looking for internal funds to present your topic.)
Publishing can boost your career, promote your organization in the market, and give you the opportunity to gather feedback on your ideas. At many companies, having a paper accepted to a conference gives you a much better chance to obtain funding and other resources.
Follow all the rules - no plagiarism, no use of copyrighted illustrations without permission, etc. Make sure people you interview give you permission to quote them. Find the conference's preferred format and follow it, even if it's nitpicky or dumb.
Finally, coordinate. In a company, see where you fit in a marketing strategy. Know the rules for talking to the media. And know who to contact if an attendee says, "We might want to do business around this idea."
At an AIAA conference this past January, I led an effort that produced two related papers and a panel session. Articles from a half-dozen publications followed, as did several business ideas.
Take your shot.

Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Read Matt's book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction.

Eyewitness Reports: Can They Help Find New Animals?

This is not a new topic for me (or anyone who follows zoology or dabbles in cryptozoology) but it bears revisiting. Are reports of eyewitnesses, trained or untrained, of real use in finding new species, or are they overwhelmingly distractions? 

This comes up a a lot in cryptozoology, but also in mainstream zoology. One the one hand, there are eyewitness reports of things like the "Michigan Dogman" that, biologically, simply cannot exist. They must be dismisses as hoaxes or misidentifications, perhaps of bears or humans, Yet eyewitness descriptions are, and have always been, one of the three major ways zoologists are led to new animals. 

There are really ONLY three ways (countless variations, but three main categories of events) in which a new animal CAN be discovered by science. They are 1) discovery of body parts (bones, trophies, things made from the animal's skin, etc); 2) scientific surveys where scientists are in the field looking for every animal in a targeted area; and 3) eyewitness accounts (either fresh or traditional) that alert scientists or explorers to the possibility of an animal and inspire expeditions to find it. Most of Dr. Alan Rabinowitz's mammal discoveries, for example, came from asking local hunters about their animals. Sometimes they could show him a trophy: other times, they described an animal they had seen and told him, or guided him, to where it could be found. As I said, there are many variations on these categories, but the idea that eyewitness encounters have not been crucial to important animal discoveries is certainly not valid.

(By the way, if you are curious what Dr. Rabinowitz has been up to, he's in the fight of his life: battling cancer while trying to save the tigers of Myanmar.  I'm in awe of the man.)

Such sightings serve as a starting point for investigators: they are not "proof" of a creature, but they can prompt us to ask interesting questions which we can then approach with the modern tools of science. The sightings of the chevron-marked beaked whale called  Mesoplodon Species A are a good example, leading eventually to an identification (which frankly still seems not quite rock-solid to me, but I have to yield to experts like Robert Pitman and company here) of this animal as the adult form of the pygmy beaked whale. Cryptozoology, properly understood, is the application of zoology, scientifically and objectively, to the discovery of new animals: the distinction is that cryptozoology opens the aperture a bit to open files on cases which are not quite as well attested as those leading to, say, the finding of the Vu Quang ox and company

What is the eyewitness report is not followed by anything more substantial? At what point do we toss it out?

Let's say it's 1908 or so, and you open a sea serpent file based on the report made by two naturalists on the yacht Valhalla. Interesting sighting, just published in the Royal Society's Proceedings - perfectly logical thing for a scientist to do. Then you wait. Do you close the file if twenty years pass without the animal being found? Probably not - the sea is a big place. Fifty years? Maybe - 50 years without a sighting was the old IUCN standard for extinction. 100 years? Well, depressingly, it's entirely logical to close the file. (I haven't quite, but I recognize I'm on shaky ground). In other words, how long does it take for absence of evidence to become evidence of absence? Maybe there should be a 50-year standard, but the cahow or Bermuda petrel was rediscovered 300 years after extinction. Some of it depends on whether the habitat can be searched: small lakes have been thoroughly searched (and dynamited) and the hypothesis (in Karl Popper’s sense of the falsifiable hypothesis being the basis of science) that there were creatures in those lakes have been properly falsified. 

It would take enormous and unavailable resources to falsify the hypothesis "There is an unclassified North American ape," but you can do it in theory.  Can the lack of followup evidence be considered falsification, and after what period of time? You inevitably end up in the world of opinion. One of mine, for example, is that nearly a hundred years without hard evidence has downgraded the Loch Ness Monster from intriguing to pure myth. 

It’s not true that “my opinion is as good as yours” (see the Pitman example above).  But it’s also true that every researcher needs to use their own judgment – hopefully skeptically (in the proper sense of that word) – when evaluating witness reports. Witnesses can be right, they can be wrong, or somewhere in the middle. But I do hold they very often give science the starting point in discovery of a new animal.   

Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Read Matt's book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction.

Some Paleontology for Your Summer Reading

 People think of summer reading as beach thrillers and romances. Why not add a little science?  What walked on that beach a hundred million years before you did?

Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved by Darren Naish and Paul Barrett  
Smithsonian, 2016: 224pp.
Naish, a paleozoologist, and Barrett, a paleontologist, have given us an altogether splendid treatment of what, as of just a couple of years ago (this business changes fast, especially regarding feathers) we know about dinosaurs.

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a LostWorld by Steve Brusatte
William Morrow, New York, 2018. 404pp.
In Rise and Fall, the latest in dinosaur science is presented in a highly readable science book doubling as a rip-roaring adventure tale. The story of dinosaurs, not just as fossils but as real animals, is masterfully presented

Fossil Legends of the First Americans by Adrienne Mayor
Princeton University Press (May 1, 2005) 488 pages
 Mayor is a scholar of the overlooked chapters of history and prehistory, such as historical Amazons and early automata. Here she asks what Native Americans thought of the fossils in fossil-rich North America, and uncovers a treasure trove of anecdotes, myths, and fossils.

Prehistoric Animals.  Text by Joseph Augusta, illustrated by Zdenek Burian. Translated by Greta Hort. Spring Books, London. (Reviewed edition is 1963: numerous versions and reprints exist.).
While much of the knowledge in this book is outdated, its influence and the excellence of the writing and illustrations enthralled a generation of professional, student, and public readers. Dr. Augusta's text is fine and the 60 plates, many in color, by the great Zdenek Burian are classic.

The Secret History of Sharks: The Rise of the Ocean’s Most Fearsome Predators

467 pp., Ballantine, 2024

John Long

Dr. John Long, an Australian paleontologist, has gifted us with the most complete and up to date book on shark evolution for non-specialists. Written in an informal but precise style, the book is information-packed, clear, and an enjoyable read if you’re into this ancient lineage of apex predators.

Long explains the origin of sharks is still a little fuzzy, but by 400 MYA the sharks had established a lineage that continues today: older than reptiles, mammals, flowers, or trees. While he tells many interesting stories of fieldwork, nothing tops the way Chinese scientists found the oldest near-complete shark, Sehnacanthus. They were relaxing, “play-fighting,” and one “kung-fu kicked another into a roadside cliff face.” A rock fell down, split open, and there it was.

As a placoderm enthusiast, I especially enjoyed the chapter dedicated to the competition of the Devonian era. Hundreds of species of armored fish, most famously the awesome “dark lord” Dunkleosteus terrelli, ruled the Age of Fishes, but Long shows the sharks were doing more than staying small and keeping a low profile. Long before the twin extinctions that ended the era and the placoderms, they were growing and diversifying, with the 20-foot Ctenacanthus rivaling Dunkleosteus itself in size. (Long notes the traditional sizing of the Dunk at up to 29 feet and the recent Engelman estimate of closer to 14 feet.)

After the Devonian, the sharks flourished, using what Long calls its superpowers. These include the development of electroreception and the evolutionary flexibility to develop new types of scales, teeth, and other features. Sharks also invaded freshwater: there are few freshwater sharks today, but at one time they were numerous and varied. The bizarre tooth-whorl Heliocoprion arose some 270 MYA. 

The larger marine reptiles of the Mesozoic were the next direct challenge. Some were bigger than any shark, but the air-breathers couldn’t invade the deeps. The first lamniform, of the group including the modern great white, appeared in this era. The sharks even developed some very large species and spun off the rays as a new type. When the mosasaurs vanished after the K-Pg impact, the adaptive sharks wriggled through yet another extinction event and diversified again, producing the wobbegongs and hammerheads. They also grew bigger, culminating in “the Meg.” Otodus megalodon was the all-time shark king from 23-3.6 MYA. However, the Meg was ill-adapted to a cooling of the oceans and/or and the move of the baleen whales to polar regions. It was in hunting Meg teeth as a boy that Long first caught the paleontology bug, so I suppose you can thank the Meg for this excellent book.

Long traces the rise of “the most sharky shark,” the great white, and spends a chapter on what we do and don’t know about this awesome creature. He rejects some of the upper claims (the famed Deep Blue may be closer to 17 feet than the claimed 21) but accepts an older 21-foot measurement. He explores the diversity of the modern sharks, over 500 species (not counting skates and rays), not overlooking the most numerous but often-ignored group, the deep-water catsharks.

Long covers in the last chapters the clash – and cooperation -of sharks and humans, the threats to sharks, and the many things we learn from them. He concludes, “If we can save the oceans and save the sharks, we can save the world.” He finishes off the book in exemplary fashion with detailed references, aa glossary, and an index. The well-chosen black and white photos and drawings illustrations complete this apex predator of modern shark books.  

Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.

Read Matt's book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction.

A Dip into Fiction : Three Tales of Jack Reacher

 Fiction: Prowling the Reacher universe 

I always liked Jack Reacher. Sure, sometimes he’s impossibly tough and smart. But Lee Child managed to make him human all the same, and his adversaries and their plots are an interesting, varied, and sometimes very original lot.  Add in the cool information on the military and law enforcement, and the result is almost always a good read.   (The ones where he’s just the co-author lack an edge somehow.) I like the TV series, after it corrected for excess explicit gore of the first season. Alan Ritchson embodies Reacher as perfectly as Christopher Reeve did Superman, which is the highest praise I can offer. The two Tom Cruise movies are good action flicks in their own right, but Reacher's size and intimidation factor is important to the stories.

I re-read three Reachers this year, and I thought I’d share. The links are to the editions I read.

Blue Moon: 

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Moon-Jack-Reacher-Novel/dp/039959356X

I should have liked this more than I did. As Reacher visits the town where his father was born and of course crosses paths with bad guys, we learn more about Jack’s family. Also of interest: it includes twists like average citizens rising to heroics, interesting villains with a terrifying scheme that might exist somewhere in real life, Reacher playing matchmaker (if inadvertently) instead of lover to the female lead, and some intriguing psychology. It didn’t quite grip me, but it’s still good. An item at the end should have been mentioned at least a bit in subsequent books but isn’t. Hmm. 

Night School: 

https://www.amazon.com/Night-School-Jack-Reacher-Novel/dp/0804178828/

A lot of detective work for Reacher, which is always nice. While in the Army, he has to solve a sniper attack on the French president before more world leaders are targeted. The diversion into the English criminal world is something he didn’t expect, but he flows with it. Reacher has to figure out, with many twists and some dead ends, who had motive, money, and skills to arrange a complicated scheme to support a single narrow objective – and what exactly that objective is. Along the way we get my favorite Reacher line: when a compatriot is killed next to Reacher, and someone asks about the blood and brains on his jacket, Reacher says, “Just a guy I used to know.” Nitpick: the physical freak who runs the English gang would never get a chance to disappear into crime: he’d be famous, a medical study from his early teens and a constant subject of press coverage. 

The Hard Way:

https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Way-Jack-Reacher/dp/0440246008/ 

One of my top Reacher picks, this one offers a lot of misdirection and twists as Reacher happens (of course) to be in the right place and time to be pulled into in an apparent kidnapping. The standard once-a-book Reacher mistake was a huge one, although it was buffered by the reasons he made it. Nitpick: the ease with which the bad guys took over a house protected by armed good guys and captured everyone needed to be explained.   As to the personal side: Reacher always leaves at the end, of course, and he’s always upfront with the “Reacher girl,” but this was the only time it felt wrong. He at least thought about doing things with his ex-FBI lover when the case was over, and their bond was genuinely romantic for a bit. Her being a decade older and their sexual connection being uniquely tender and memorable for Reacher (details not given) made you hope he’d stick around a while or at least promise visits.  There was, presumably, a farewell discussion that's not related on page. I'd like to have read it.

Matt Bille is a writer, aerospace consultant, naturalist, and historian based in Colorado Springs.  His last novel, Death by Legend, is cryptozoological horror tale set in modern Los Angeles. His scientific thriller Apex Predator will be out in 2026 from Blackstone Publishing.

Matt Bille's Author Web Page

The Strangest Human Spaceflight Ideas

 Next Man Up? The Weirdest Piloted Rocket Ideas

Historical programs and events don’t only provide us further ideas. They provide warnings. Ever since the ides of humans in space left the science fiction stage and people started designing rockets to support human life, there have been new ideas and designs. Some have been brilliant. Some haven’t. Some make one wonder whether the engineers were ever tested for controlled substances.

For this essay, let’s call our astronaut “Buster,” the crash dummy from MythBusters. Buster was blown up and burned when re-creating the perhaps-mythical flight of the Chinese sage Wan Ho, who tried to fly a winged chair propelled by gunpowder rockets. So he’s perfect for this job.

The first half of spaceflight is getting the astronaut to space. There are two basic ideas. One is a capsule mounted on an expendable or reusable booster. It’s easier technically, and it’s long been the default: the latest capsules even manage to look spiffy. The piloted spaceplane is technically much more difficult and complex, and was never pulled off until the U.S. Space Shuttle. Smaller ones may fly soon.

That said, aerospace engineers are an imaginative bunch, and in the early years they put that imagination on the drawing boards. The first ideas came from people with imagination but not the technology to test it out. Pioneering space thinker Konstantin Tsiolkovsky designed a large human-carrying rocket ship. Suborbital rocket ideas included the “Silverbird” space plane by Germans Eugen Sänger and Irene Bredt in the late 1930s. It was, if not practical, a beautiful piece of speculative design: the Soviets studied a copy in 1946, and Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) looked again in 1985. A piloted version of the V-2 was bandied about at Peenemunde: it could have been tested, but was not, given the wartime priorities and the fact Buster probably would have had to be ordered to test it at gunpoint.  

All astronauts to date have been launched using chemically-fueled rockets, a technology originally developed for unguided rockets and then missiles. A “manned missile” was a good approximation of the first spaceship concepts, like the Air Force’s Man in Space Soonest (MISS) (canceled in favor of Project Mercury). 

USAF image of MISS

After the Air Force and NASA had staked out their roles in human spaceflight, the Navy remained interested. They apparently decided all the rational ideas were taken, and their engineers/contractors explored taking the “manned missile” term literally, firing astronauts from the missile launch tubes of submarines. This might have been the unlikeliest launcher since Wan Ho’s. Buster would enter a tiny capsule on top of a modified Polaris and be shot into space. Getting a proper thrust to weight ratio was probably impossible, and the ride would have been very harsh. The justification for launching in the first place was meager: with no room for any significant payload except Buster, there wasn’t much he could do except perhaps augment the crew of a larger ship or station. I know there are illustrations of this, but I can’t find one.

Launching a piloted craft from a gun was the idea in Jules’ Verne’s From The Earth to the Moon. Kenneth Anderson’s novel Nemo describes how this might have been built as a real project, although the end would be a flattened pile of junk not many miles from the launch site.  

Image: Verne’s Columbiad launch

Robert Heinlein, in his well-researched 1947 The Man Who Sold the Moon, sent rockets up with the help of an electromagnetic catapult built over the cog railway route on Pikes Peak. Versions of that idea have been floated ever since, but no hardware has been built. (Your historian was one of the people who was far too optimistic about this, publishing a paper subtitled, “A Launch Solution on the Way to Reality.”) 

We're in a very busy time for human spaceflight, including tourist and other commercial flight. Stranger ideas may follow!

Read Matt's latest nonfiction book, Of Books and Beasts: A Cryptozoologist's Library. This unique reference offers a friendly skeptic's 400 reviews of books on cryptozoology, zoology, related sciences, and cryptozoological fiction. His next novel. the cryptozoological horror tale Death by Legend, has just hit the shelves!