Tasmanian Tiger

The thylacine is not seen anymore, but was found on the island of Tasmania, and was called the Tasmanian Wolf because it looked like a dog, and a Tasmanian Tiger because it was striped like a Tiger.

Thylacines were actually a marsupial like the kangaroo, and did, in an even earlier time, live in Australia. Today, the are found in Museums, where they are taxidermied (stuffed mounted skins).

Although some people place them in with UFOs, bigfoot, cupracabra, Nessie the Loch Ness Monster, and wild panthers in the British countryside, thylacines were real, and unlike the dinosaurs, thylacines were around running wild and in zoos until the 1930s and there are black & white photos of them.

One of my favorite books was one about jungles by Ivan T. Sanderson - Sanderson was quite the explorer and walked long distances through jungles studying the plants and animals.

Ivan T. Sanderson was a tropical backpacker before they had backpacks.

His travel adventures were at a time when travel was travel! Not like today, when you go to the other end of the Earth and they have the same type of buildings, the same brands of cars, the very same fast food restaurants.

He was also a good writer, and I loved his book. I was aghast to find that he also wrote on topics that I did NOT believe in, cryptozoology, the paranormal, alternate planes of existence (a religious belief to some), and things like that.

But since Sanderson, my hero at that time, had written them, I read them. And like many another person who eases into a new topic, I became interested.

I am still much the sceptic.

But I had enjoyed Edgar Rice Burroughs (Author of: Tarzan, Pellucidar, the Barsoom series -John Carter of Mars, and what was the one on Venus?) and I read crypotozoology the same way -

- like History as Fantasy for people who don't like fantasy, I view crypotozoology as Fantasy For Those Who Must Call It Science - until the subject of the Thylacine comes up.

The thylacine was real, it could still be real, and therefor, could other primitive animals lurk about? An occasional sterile cross between a deer and a horse, whose gametes usually don't unite? (unicorn).

A rare take between wild cat and rabbit, which drops out genes not common to them both, thereby producing a primitive beast?

A Lake Monster? ("Loch Ness Monster" - "Loch" is just Scottish for "Lake", and they name their lakes like we do, Lake Erie, Lake Superior, etc. So it just means: Monster of Lake Ness.)

Could two fish that can not normally be interfertile, be under the influence of a virus, and produce an occasional throw back? (A "throw back" to an earlier point in evolution.)? Sure.

Most of our old genes are NOT deleted, which is why some mammal fetuses have gill slits. The unneeded genes are simply turned off.

A "throw back" is a lay term for an animal whose old genes fail to turn off.

So, a "monster" need not even be an interspecies cross, just where a virus slips into an egg or embryo and 'opens a long closed genetic file'.

Thylacine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_tiger

Cryptozoology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_T._Sanderson

Edgar Rice Burroughs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Rice_Burroughs
At the bottom of the Burroughs entry, you will find the pot of gold - The Gutenberg Project.

tip - Disney is said to be making one of the Barsoom novels - John Carter of Mars? A Princess of Mars?

The whole Barsoom series ("Barsoom is Martian for their planet, Mars) is very good, and as a series you might want to start with the first one.

Great stuff, would make great action comics or Manga. Full of other worlds. Much like Avatar?