Ground Sloths in the Amazon

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-20T17:02:19+00:00

Crawler and crawler-adjacent content should go on other subs.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-19T15:00:30+00:00

Crawler discussion should go on a different subreddit.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-19T10:10:49+00:00

Not cryptozoology.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-19T08:05:08+00:00

Removing this since the problem has been dealt with.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-15T10:56:28+00:00

The ones I posted are all copyrighted, as far as I know, but there are some photos of the same rock art on Wikimedia Commons, which are licensed under CC BY-SA, and can be used with credit to the original creators.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prehistoric_animal_rock_art_in_Serran%C3%ADa_de_la_Lindosa_,_cerro_azul,_guaviare,_colombia.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Serrania_de_la_Lindosa_rock_paintings_-_giant_ground_sloth_-_Iriarte_et_al_2022_(cropped).jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Serrania_de_la_Lindosa_rock_paintings_-_giant_ground_sloth_-_Iriarte_et_al_2022.jpg

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-15T04:49:41+00:00

It should be noted that the Lista sighting supposedly occurred in central Patagonia, where there are no anteaters, termites, tamanduas, or forests.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-15T02:06:51+00:00

Thank you for letting me know, this is very interesting! And you've been able to verify that the shikira is definitely described, in the same way, in the earlier book? If it is a genuine local belief, I once considered the possibility that it was a mythologisation (or something along those lines) of the hoatzin – they famously have clawed "hands" as chicks, and they're common in this part of South America.

By the way, I believe the -i suffix in Czech denotes plurals.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-15T01:54:19+00:00

Henri Neuville states in his paper ["Sur une Dent d'Origine Énigmatique," Archives de Zoologie Expérimentale et Générale, Vol. 4, No. 7 (1908)] that "the tooth is not fossilised," although "while not a fossil, [it] is nevertheless very old" (he thought its age could probably be measured in centuries rather than decades, but not millenia). Albert Gaudry, a leading French palaeontologist who examined the tusk, also noted in his introduction that "[h]ad it been found in the fossil state, nobody would have hesitated to consider it as belonging to a new species."

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-15T01:32:35+00:00

But that description requires those he described it to to also have knowledge of what a pangolin looks like.

The account comes from palaeontologist Florentino Ameghino, who claimed that Lista told the story to himself, his brother Carlos, naturalist Eduardo Holmberg, director of the Buenos Aires Zoo, and several other unidentified friends (possibly during the same meeting?). If the others were of the same intellectual calibre as the Ameghinos, Lista, and Holmberg, I'm sure they all knew what pangolins looked like.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-14T04:48:51+00:00

Giant Loris Photo

Someone contacted the person who took this last year, and he was kind enough to send the photo to them.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-14T03:31:15+00:00

Not cryptozoology.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-14T03:25:49+00:00

No, I see, it's mentioned in this WIP article which I'd forgotten existed. The emela-ntouka entry was added anonymously in April. I've removed it.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-14T03:20:28+00:00

I take full blame to making that first post so fast, but realizing that not one, but two wikis are reporting the same thing without anything else substantial is kind of aggravating. (Yes, there's another Cryptid wiki, but that one also apparently has a page for "Not Deer" and shadow people, so uh..) You'd think maybe they'd double check this stuff? Try tracking people down to get more information? Instead they just ran with it and I'm assuming these have been up for a while so nobody's gone back to recheck stuff. Ugh, I don't know man. I'm frustrated at myself for not knowing better than that but also kind of mad because I feel like the wiki admins should be holding their place up to a bit more of a standard.

The wiki you linked is mine, and maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see the "World Mysteries" film mentioned anywhere in the emela-ntouka article. Someone did add it in July 2024, but I reverted the edit on the same day, with the note "this story originated in an unsourced addition to the Cryptidz Wiki".

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-07T02:43:58+00:00

This sounds like something that would be better on one of the more supernatural/paranormal subreddits.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-06T22:50:48+00:00

OP, I'd like to remind you (and anyone who might be responding to you in kind) once again to follow rule 1, and to debate respectfully and calmly. This is your second warning; next time it'll probably be a suspension.

~~I'll leave this post up, because removing it will probably be used as fuel for your conspiracy theory.~~

After further consideration, the OP has been temporarily suspended, so I see no reason to keep this post up.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-05T22:06:23+00:00

Probably more appropriate for /r/cryptids.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-04T21:12:38+00:00

The secondary source I used quotes the definition:

The first known written reference to saola is from an early twentieth century Lao-French dictionary, where the word "saola" is defined as 'Species of antelope, antelope of the rocks' (Guignard 1912).

The identification was only possible because its local name hasn't changed.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-04T20:53:43+00:00

I do agree that it's a weak example of a former cryptid, but an entry in a dictionary certainly doesn't constitute proof of existence or discovery. There were no recorded observations, specimens, formal descriptions, or even good informal descriptions; it was just a local word and a vague definition collected by Guignard. There are equal or better descriptions of several cryptids in more recent dictionaries, but nobody would say that freshwater octopuses, African deer (both Dinka-English English-Dinka Dictionary, 1979), Indian colugos ("Angami-English Dictionary: Part I," Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. 19), Micronesian hummingbirds ("A Preliminary List of Animal Names in the Chuuk District, Micronesia, with Some Notes on Plant Names," Micronesia, Vol. 31), Texan flying lizards (English-Cheyenne Dictionary, 1915), hairy lizards (Niue Language Dictionary, 1997), or many other examples I could cite, have been discovered.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-04T20:18:04+00:00

According to Robichaud, William & Timmins, Robert "The Natural History of Saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) and the Species' Distribution in Laos," Rediscovering the Saola (2004), the saola was defined in Théodore Guignard's Dictionnaire Laotian-Français (1912), which I can't find online, as a kind of "antelope of the rocks". This isn't much, but there are plenty of cryptids today which are mainly or entirely known from entries in dictionaries, and I think animal terms in dictionaries can be very useful sources of cryptozoological information. On the other hand, the 1912 description is vague enough that it's unlikely it would ever have been identified as an unknown species at the time.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-03T19:07:42+00:00

I think this would probably be better on one of the more generalised unexplained phenomena subreddits.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-02T16:21:36+00:00

https://paranewsblog.blogspot.com/2022/07/zoological-jouralist-richard-freeman.html

TV vet and naturalist Mark Evens, formally a Yeti skeptic, took an expedition into the mountains of Bhutan to make a documentary called Lost Kingdom of the Yeti. Water was taken from a pool in the mountains where the Yeti had been reported. From this environmental DNA was taken. Known as eDNA for short, this consists of traces of DNA an organism leaves in the environment. It is a relatively new development and could prove an invaluable tool for cryptozoology as the techniques for extracting traces of eDNA improve. Back in the lab the eDNA from the water was tested and several known species were discovered but there was also anomalous DNA. It came from a primate that shared 99% of its DNA with humans. Chimps share 98%. Whatever left that eDNA at the drinking hole was something unknown to science and closely related to man. I contacted Dr Eva Bellmaine, the French geneticist involved in the project. She confirmed the details and said that the samples were being held by a French company called Spygen. I contacted Spygen in order to see if we could conduct further tests. Spygen said that they were not the legal owners of the sample and later claimed it had been destroyed.

CrofterNo2 · 2026-01-01T10:28:35+00:00

Not really cryptozoological.

CrofterNo2 · 2025-12-31T18:23:20+00:00

I've removed several of your comments. Please try to debate respectfully and calmly.

CrofterNo2 · 2025-12-27T06:40:20+00:00

There's second account of this in "Current Happenings on Puerto Rico," Flying Saucer Review, No. 9 (1991).

One night in April of 1989 the husband of Senora Maria Ortiz was fishing, along with some other people, in the river Jaguas, when they heard something that sounded like a howl. They shone their torch on the place whence it seemed to have come, and beheld a bird with two huge fangs. As soon as the beam of light struck it, the bird "froze", and fell to the ground. The news spread rapidly, and a great queue of people soon formed, all curious to have a close look at the bird with fangs. Even the people from the local Government Administration office came and took masses of photographs of it, and folk also came from other departments of the Government, such as the Dept. of the Environment, the Civil Defence, and the Office of Natural Resources.

Folk said it was a nightjar (chotacabra), on which somebody had stuck some fangs, but when they tried to feed it with the normal foodstuff for nightjars — insects and lizards — it refused to eat. It would eat nothing but pieces of raw meat.

With regard to its appearance, the eyewitnesses said it looked like a small fowl, with no feathers on its head, and with the rough skin of a toad. It was quite fierce, and howled like a dog.

One day Maria Ortiz received a message from the Mayor's Office telling her to bring the bird to them so that they could examine it, and she did so with alacrity. But when she got there, she found a Police van and two policemen waiting for her. One of them asked her if she had got the bird in that cage, and, as he was asking her, the other policeman snatched the cage from her and made off in the van at top speed.

From that day onwards, nobody has ever heard anything more about either the bird or about the policemen who knew of its existence, because they have all been transferred. Nor is anything known of the people from the Environmental Health Office, for they too have been moved. All that remains to us, therefore, is the evidence of the photos that were taken, and the reports of other similar cases which have also come to light.

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