Extinction is Forever—Sometimes

This display hangs on the wall at the
 International Cryptozoology Museum
in Portland, Maine.

Extinction is forever. Except for when it isn’t. 

Scientists discovered fossils of a fish known as the coelacanth in the 19th century. Experts dated the oldest known coelacanth fossils to at least 410 million years old. Coelacanths went extinct about 66 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous epoch—or so we thought. As it turns out, coelacanths are an example—the best-known example—of a “Lazarus taxon.” For those who do not attend regular church services, or whose parents did not force them to go to Sunday school as a kid, the term “Lazarus taxon” comes from Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in John 11:

32 Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. 33 When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled. 34 And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. 35 Jesus wept. 36 Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him! 37 And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died? 38 Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. 39 Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days. 40 Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? 41 Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. 42 And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. 43 And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. 44 And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.

Heard it Before

In the same way that Lazarus came forth from his tomb, so too did the coelacanth. On December 23, 1938, a fisherman caught a coelacanth off the coast of South Africa. The rest is history. Wikipedia says: “Courtenay-Latimer contacted a Rhodes University ichthyologist, J.L.B. Smith, sending him drawings of the fish, and he confirmed the fish’s importance with a famous cable: “Most Important Preserve Skeleton and Gills=Fish Described.””

Since the initial discovery, other coelacanths have been found. The coelacanth truly is a “living fossil.” Most everyone familiar with cryptozoology (the study of hidden or undiscovered animals) has heard the coelacanth story many times over, so I apologize for repeating it. However, due to its importance, I feel the coelacanth discovery bears repeating. It is a perfect illustration of why it is okay to question official narratives.

Rats!

Extinction is forever—well, not quite. It is not as sexy as the coelacanth’s “sudden reappearance,” but the Laotian rock rat came back to life, too. The rat had supposedly been extinct for over 11 million years—the later stages of the Miocene Epoch. But somehow, Laotian rock rats appeared in a meat market in 1996. While the experts believed the Laotian rock was extinct, locals were serving them for dinner.

Locals know a lot. Especially those locals who are just regular, hardworking folks—salt of the earth types. For instance, in 2017, Reuters ran a report titled: “Big tree-dwelling rodent found in Solomon Islands.” The gist of the story was that local islanders had long told scientists of a massive rat, about a foot and a half long, with reddish fur. Of course, the experts did not believe in existence of the rat, called the vika, until they spotted it. Only then did the vika officially exist.

Even though the locals were right about the vika, the experts still hold on to doubts about the stories locals tell. For instance, locals claim the rat chews holes through coconuts and eats the inside. But Tyrone Lavery of the Field Museum in Chicago said: “I haven’t found proof of this yet, but I have found that they can eat a very thick-shelled nut called a ngali nut.” I’m pretty sure if the locals say vikas eat coconuts, then they eat coconuts. The indigenous people can tell the difference between a nut and a coconut.

Other Examples

Indigenous folks in the Gran Chaco knew the Chacoan peccary was alive and did not go extinct at end of the last ice age. Scientists caught up to the locals in 1971. The New Guinea big-eared bat had been extinct since around 1890. That is, until scientists caught one in a bat trap in 2012.

Officials declared the Caribbean monk seal extinct in 2008. This had been a long time coming as the last “confirmed” living Caribbean monk seal dated back to 1952. Scientists made many attempts to locate surviving Caribbean monk seals which included aerial surveys. Though they found nothing, to me, that does not mean there aren’t a few stragglers hanging around. After all, trying to locate a seal, or a small number of seals, over a vast area is tantamount to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

As a quick example of how hard it is to pinpoint an animal, consider this story. UPI reported on a May 26, 2022, that authorities had finally captured a loose bison. The 1,300 pound bison—named Tyson—had been on the loose in Illinois for eight months after escaping from a trailer. Think about that for a moment. Something as large as a bison evaded capture for eight months in Illinois—not a Canadian wilderness. It took “cattle capture experts” on horseback aided by drones and dogs to bring in wily escapee.

Back to the Caribbean monk seal, in 1997, interviewers spoke to ninety-three fishermen from villages in Haiti and Jamaica. Of those, sixteen claimed to have seen at least one Caribbean monk seal during the last two years. To this day, divers and fisherman report seeing a Caribbean monk seal from time to time. Of course, most scientists are skeptical of the claims and attribute the sightings to hooded seals. There are “confirmed” sightings of hooded seals as far south as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. (Further reading: M.P. Stanfield and I.L. Boyd. “Circumstantial Evidence for the Presence of Monk Seals in the West Indies.” Onyx 32, 1998.)

I suppose it comes down to who you believe. Do you believe the experts? Or do you take the word of local fishermen who are on the water every day? I know who I side with. I will take the word of locals who make their living on the water over scientists one hundred times out of a hundred.

How Do You Know?

I’ve never been a big believer that scientists really know when a species has gone extinct. Think about it—the last critically endangered species does not find a scientist to check in with before it dies. Despite their best efforts, scientists cannot comb every square inch of land and sea to determine if in fact the last of a kind has died. So, you’ll have to excuse my skepticism that extinction is forever in regards to the legendary Tasmanian tiger. Supposedly, it went extinct in 1936. But there have been credible reports of its existence after 1936, including recent reports, which I lean toward believing.

Officially, the last mountain lion in my home state of Virginia was killed in Washington County in 1882. But that was always a head-scratcher for me. How, exactly, can something like that even be known? But the better question is how can something unknowable be accepted as truth? Virginians have spotted mountain lions since their supposed extinction. This continues into the present day. Others and I have found mountain lion tracks and scat on lonely mountain ridges. Folks are coming around and now say western mountain lions are migrating east. Surely that is true. But I think eastern cougars didn’t all die off. Pockets of survivors have always been in remote mountainous areas of Virginia.

This "extinction is forever" quandary is something I intend to explore in a new book series titled Extinction Escapees. In the first book, I take a look at mammoths and mastodons. Native traditions and eyewitness accounts point to these beasts living into recent times.

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