Two Gems: Doubtful News and Tet Zoo

A salute to two outstanding sources of information on the creature world. This link to Sharon Hill's Doubtful News includes her nod to Darren Naish's Tet Zoo blog on its 8th birthday.

Now, I don't always agree with these authors, but they do their homework. Sharon might be called a generally skeptical science writer, while Dr. Naish is one of the UK's foremost authorities on extinct reptiles their kin (particularly pterosaurs and sauropods) and countless other animal-related topics. (Sharon also distances herself from the insistence that any skepticism must be coupled with atheism, an annoying strain of thought that crops up a lot in the writings of the many skeptics who love Richard Dawkins. (I never found Dawkins' approach to atheism convincing anyway: he outlines his own idea of what God must be like, then argues that God doesn't exist.)  Daniel Loxton, coauthor of a major recent book on cryptozoology, has an interesting column on this.)

To get back on topic, if you are going to understand cryptozoology, you have to understand these sources. For example, Sharon Hill pretty much destroyed the Melba Ketchum Bigfoot DNA silliness, while Naish's work on "sea serpents" has landed some hard shots against the too-credulous approach while leaving room for the possibility that there just might be (or until recently has been) an undiscovered pinniped at the root of this business. 

So, Sharon and Darren - soldier on!