As surprising as it seems, there have been reports of platypus-like creatures in Chilean territory for over a century, The earliest accounts date back to the 1800s, when explorers traveling through Patagonia described strange semi-aquatic animals with duck-like bills inhabiting the region's cold rivers and wetlands. While these reports were largely forgotten, the most famous sighting occurred in the 1970s, when an anonymous amateur naturalist claimed to have encountered one in Tierra del Fuego. The account was later relayed to BBC producer Michael Andrews, who passed it on to the renowned cryptozoologist J. Richard Greenwell.

What makes this case particularly interesting is its possible paleontological connection. Greenwell suggested that these reports might be linked to Monotrematum sudamericanum, an extinct species of giant platypus that lived in Chilean and Argentinian Patagonia during the Paleocene. Discovered from fossils in Patagonia, it became the first known platypus species found outside Oceania, raising the intriguing—though highly speculative—possibility that an unknown descendant could have survived in remote southern waterways. If such an animal existed today, it would likely differ from the modern Australian platypus, possibly being larger and better adapted to Patagonia's cold climate with thicker fur and a more robust build.

Beyond Tierra del Fuego, a handful of platypus-like sightings have also been reported in Chile's La Araucanía Region and near the Temuco River, suggesting a wider—but entirely unconfirmed—distribution. However, these observations could also be explained by introduced American beavers (Castor canadensis), which spread into Chile after being released in Argentina and can sometimes be misidentified at a distance.

When cryptozoologists learned of the existence of Ghabali (image 1), upon showing images of animals, the natives pointed to a Postosuchus (image 2) as being Ghabali. They said that the head and body were similar to those of Postosuchus, but the legs of Ghabali were more like those of a crocodile; spread out, instead of supporting the body from below.

And there's another problem: Postosuchus lived in the Triassic period, meaning a T-rex lived closer to us than a Postosuchus.

Then, some time ago, I learned of the existence of a family of South American crocodilians called Sebecosuchia (image 3). These were crocodilians that appeared in the Middle Jurassic and survived until the Miocene. Their fossils have been found in South America, Europe, Madagascar, India, and North Africa.

All sebecosuchians were carnivorous and terrestrial. But could some individuals have reverted to a semi-aquatic lifestyle to escape competition with mammals? This leads some to theorize that South American sebecosuchians became extinct in competition with large felines and canids during the Great American Interchange about 6 million years ago.

Arte de @_magmabug

I know a few like the bathysphere fish, 52hz whale, 4chan black carpet, deep star 4000 fish etc. but do you guys have MORE cryptids you guys heard?

I recently started researching cryptids, and the images, when they exist, just look fake. Please share photos here of cryptids you’ve seen, or photos of cryptids that appear genuinely real and have never been debunked.

The only one that comes to mind is the Skunk Ape, but I've seen a lot of people saying it's just a black bear or someone in a costume.

How does one come up with this

(edit: i didn't write this, it's an extract for the original recount, so people stop saying i use AI)

Last night, a cousin of mine was driving along the highway—on a stretch that was pitch-black and hemmed in by hills—when he spotted something odd by the side of the road. At first, he thought it was a dog or a small guanaco, but as he slowed down, he realized it wasn't walking on all fours.

It was standing upright.

He describes it as a short, thin figure with a long tail, moving quickly—sort of hopping in short bursts among the rocks. He managed to snap a few photos from inside the car because the idea of ​​getting out freaked him out.

In the first one, you can barely make out a silhouette at the edge of the road.

In the second, the shape is clearer—it looks like it’s crossing toward the shoulder.

And in the third, it appears further away, almost disappearing into the rocks, but right behind it, there’s a strange kind of distortion—as if the air were rippling or splitting apart.

My cousin swears it wasn't a dog, a fox, or a person. What struck him most was that, for a few seconds, the car's headlights seemed to illuminate that part of the road strangely—as if there were fog or heat haze—even though it was the dead of night.

When he reached the next toll booth, he examined the photos more closely and got even more spooked, because in one of them, you can clearly see the thing moving on two legs.

I don't know if it’s just suggestion, an optical illusion, some strange animal, or what, but it immediately reminded me of those old stories from the north about weird creatures lurking by the roadside.

I’m uploading the photos so you guys can tell me if I’m overreacting or if there’s actually something there.

Has anyone else heard stories like this about driving the highway at night?

I don't know if anyone from Arica remembers the famous "interdimensional dinosaur" case, but I was sent these photos and it instantly brought that to mind.

Source: Ariqueñodecorazon. RRSS

I would like to discuss the general rules by which we can judge the likelihood of a cryptid existing, aside from empirical evidence.

1. The Cryptid must follow the laws of physics. While the general natural laws of biology can be bent a bit, the laws of physics cannot. A creature cannot create its body mass out of nothing, get free energy, or be a perpetual motion animal. They cannot beat the Square-Cube Law, Entropy, or Thermodynamics.

2. The Cryptid must be sensibly linked to the existing taxonomy. While some "missing links" between the supposed cryptid species and their plausible Genus can be allowed, the species cannot be completely impossible to be placed in a Family or Suborder. If the Order or Class cannot be determined, its not a cryptid, its an alien, and if the Phylum or Kingdom cannot be determined, its probably not a living creature in the first place.

3. The Cryptid cannot be an "ancient" Species or Genus. While not impossible, it's very implausible that a species would survive for millions of years unchanged, while simultaneously living in an environment where humans can encounter it often enough for it to gain Cryptid status. So for example, a living deep-sea Coeleacanth species that barely changed for the last 65mln years is a fact, but a species of land-based dinosaur could not have remained unchanged since then, as their environment changed entirely several times over which would enforce evolution or cause their extinction. Arguably, a Cryptid could be an atavistic evolutionary "throwback" (like say, a bird evolving to look like a velociraptor again) but it is extremely improbable.

4. The Cryptid cannot be an R-selected explosive breeder of any kind, or we would have found and proven it by now. R-Selected breeders produce a lot of offspring to dominate their environment, and the offspring either fill the eco-niche entirely, or is severely culled by the survival of the fittest. Such species are almost impossible to miss, they are only "cryptids" in that their exact species is not separated in the taxonomy due to the abundance of subspecies of their kind. (like say, a 425th subspecies of shrimp is a Cryptid for shrimpologists for a while, but just a regular animal to most people). Just because there is a debate whether Yet Another Shrimp Species exists or not does not make it a cryptid, and the elusive Slightly Different Finch That One Ornitologist Saw Once is only a cryptid on technicality.

   1. The Cryptid cannot be low in the food chain, or if it is, it cannot be a major link. By definition, Cryptids are rare, and if they were at the bottom of the food chain then their predators would be even rarer, and their predators rarer still, until the apex predator species would be too small in numbers to survive inbreeding. Thus, the higher an animal is in the food chain, the greater the likelihood of it being elusive enough to gain Cryptid status (ex: If there was a species of bear that predominantly hunted Sasquatches as its main diet, it would be even more of a Cryptid than Bigfoot).
      

5. The Cryptid needs to be a Specialised Niche Species, not a Universal Adaptive Generalist Species. There are unlikely to be any Cryptid cockroaches, ants, rats, mice, rabbits or catfish (sorry anglers!) because if there were, they would break out of cryptid status by spreading all over the world and becoming widely known. Hence why the giant squid exists and used to be a Cryptid (giant squids are ubiquitous, but only in their specific niche of oceanic depths) but a universal adaptive generalist cephalopod like an octopus cannot grow the same size: seeing how we are not encountering a kraken any time we visit the beach.

6. The Cryptid must be a relatively long-lived species for its genus and family. The whole reason Cryptids are cryptic is that they can exist as tiny, stable populations for a very, very long time, inhabiting a tiny and remote niche that humans seldom explore. But if the cryptid were a short-lived animal that achieves sexual maturity and breeds quickly, then it would eventually evolve out of its niche or go extinct, due to compounded mutations from all the passing generations.

7. A corollary to the points above, the Cryptid must be a species relatively immune to inbreeding depression, since it would, by definition, breed within a tiny population. For example, the likelihood of the Bigfoot existing is greatly reduced by the fact that it would need to have a close-knit population of AT LEAST 1000 individuals to avoid extinction by incest, and if we assume Bigfeet predated the arrival of homo sapiens in America, they would need a population of 5000 to stand any chance. This alone disproves Bigfoot, since rather than a solitary, rare and elusive powerful beast, it would be a whole town's-worth of mishappen Habsburg-looking mofos. In general, this problem makes mammalian Cryptids significantly less likely to be real.

8. The Cryptid must have little environmental footprint. It cannot drop turds everywhere, or die in the open and leave a sus skeleton for humans to find. It cannot leave easily identifiable footprints, tufts of fur, claw marks, or mark its territory. It cannot build nests, burrows or other kinds of shelter. It cannot be an intensive hunter or grazer that would scour their habitat clean, or we would have found the evidence long ago.

9. Finally, the Cryptid must be relatively intelligent for its Family, let alone its Genus. There is only so much a niche environment or sharp instincts can help a creature avoid being detected by humans; it needs to be smart enough to specifically recognise humans as a threat, not just react instinctively to our sight, noise, or smell.

So, what we are looking for is a peculiarly robust apex predator/omnivore perfectly fit for a niche that had not changed for hundreds of thousands of years at least, that exists on the very edge of starvation without losing metabolic efficiency, lives for a long time, breeds late and very rarely, is much smarter than we could expect (definitely sentient, possibly sapient), and is strongly ressistant to the detrimental effects of genetic mutations, not just the ones that come from inbreeding, but also the ones caused by viruses, parasites, cancerogens etc.

This page appeared in an article about animals supposedly discovered by Marc Van Roosmalen, but I cannot find this page on his website anywhere. I ask because, in addition to the giant paca, orange coati, and *onça-canguçú* skull, the image apparently shows other species he reported.

we know that most hybrids between big cats and pumas have dwarfism, so could any dog sized cryptids that are cat like be explained as a puma-jaguar hybrid?

I’ve been trying to find an old YouTube video that I watched around 2009 or so when I was first exploring YouTube. I’ve searched for it on and off over the years but haven’t been able to find it, and I’m beginning to wonder if it was deleted or has become lost media.
Here’s what I remember:
I’m fairly certain the video was titled something like “New Jersey Devil Attack”, or something extremely close to that.
I watched it around 2009, though the upload itself may have been older.
It was presented as found footage like, making it seem like it was a real recording.
I specifically remember the title and/or description claiming that the incident took place in Boston, not New Jersey. I’m quite confident about this because I distinctly remember people in the comments pointing out that the New Jersey Devil is supposed to be associated with New Jersey, making the video’s location claim suspicious.
The footage was very shaky, as if the people filming were frightened or running.
Most of the video showed what appeared to be a the darkness inside a large storm drain, sewer entrance, culvert, or tunnel.
I remember there being a small light visible deep inside the darkness.

Twice, at two different points between short intervals there was a very loud, high-pitched banshee like scream or screech, which the video basically implied came from the New Jersey Devil before the video cuts off.
I don’t remember seeing the creature clearly, if at all.
There wasn’t much dialogue—just some distant voices before the scream.
The ending strongly implied, and I think the description said that the people filming (possibly at least one woman from what I remember of the voices from the video) were attacked or disappeared and were never found, or were found dead with unidentifiable injuries or markings.
I also remember many people in the comments saying the video looked fake or questioning its authenticity.
One detail I remember quite well is that someone later made a YouTube video response made during the day where they visited the supposed filming location and concluded that there was nothing unusual there, suggesting the original video was a hoax.
I fully understand that the video was almost certainly fake and I’m not trying to prove it was real. I’m simply trying to locate the original upload or find out if anyone else remembers it.
Because this was around 16–17 years ago, it’s possible that a few minor details are off. However, I’m most confident about the following:
The title being “New Jersey Devil Attack” (or something extremely similar).
Watching it around 2009 or 2011.
The found-footage style.
The tunnel/storm drain with a light visible inside.
The loud screech.
The claim that it happened in Boston, which people criticized in the comments.
The existence of a follow-up debunking/video response where someone visited the location.
I think it even claimed there were news reports or a newspaper or something describing the bodies being found or something, I don’t remember fully.
Does anyone else remember this video, know who uploaded it, or know if it’s been archived anywhere?

Update: FOUND! And I did get some details wrong, my bad.

Here’s the video- https://youtu.be/TfBsBcVJP8Q?is=5ppF0n_2oe-ddbem

Wow; this one goes wayyyy back.

Well, I’m new to this community and have recently become interested in cryptozoology. I want to understand why there is such an interested and engaged community dedicated to searching for Sasquatch, given that, at least to me, all the main evidence seems simply fake or fabricated. Please share your reasons and the evidence that leads you to believe in Sasquatch.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9q9gq7xllyo

Saw some speculation on here a few weeks ago about it and i've just seen this pop up in my feed whilst scrolling, It was a F2 Savannah cat and upon taking it to the vet it was found to have a broken paw which could account for any weird gait in the earlier sighting video.