Thursday, October 01, 2015

Counting down to the ICM Cryptozoology Conference

Three months and counting to the International Cryptozoology Museum conference in St. Augustine, Florida.  This looks like a really fun gathering, with authors, field researchers, and scientists coming together in the oldest city in the United States,

I'll be talking about bears, which is a topic I've had a special liking for.  Bears figure in cryptozoology a lot. Some have no doubt been mistaken for Bigfoot (and, indeed, Loren even found an old clipping where a gigantic grizzly was nicknamed Bigfoot). Bears star in many other zoological mysteries, from the erroneous suggestion of a new species in Bryan Sykes' The Nature of the Beast to reports of really odd bears from Alaska and Kamchatka: mistakes aside, it really is possible the eight species we know today are not quite all the bears out there.

The ICM is the life's work of Loren Coleman, dean of living US cryptozoologists.  Loren and I have our disagreements (most notably, I do not hold out hope for nearly as many spectacular undiscovered animals as he does), but I respect his dedication and do my best to garner support for the Museum, an irreplaceable treasure house of tens of thousands of items on animals known, unknown, and mythical.

See you in Florida!

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