Before we say goodbye to cryptids, let’s take a moment to celebrate the cryptozoologist’s dream: the Lazarus taxon. That’s a species that was thought to be extinct, whether all the way back to the fossil record or as recently as a few years ago. Then it appears, or reappears, in a manner and a place that can be recorded by science.
This is what cryptid hunters hope for when they pursue legends and rumors and sightings. If Bigfoot can be some kind of giant ape, if Nessie and her fellow lake monsters can be a remnant population of plesiosaurs, if somehow the jungles of the western Africa are hiding a new or evolved species of sauropods. If. If only.
Sometimes a species hovers on the edge between extinct and maybe (just maybe) not. Both the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger and the ivory-billed woodpecker have been in and out of the news. Someone saw one, or evidence of one, or indications that there might be one out there. They might promise to produce that evidence, but what emerges isn’t quite as convincing as advertised. It’s a testimony to hope, and to the power of belief.
And sometimes hope is rewarded. It’s not always the big, sexy species that reappear. Sometimes it’s a plant, but this is the Bestiary, so we’ll stay in the animal kingdom.
One of the stars of the Lazarus taxa is a striking-looking fish called the coelacanth. It was thought to have gone extinct around 65 million years ago—coincidentally, about the time the last sauropod disappeared from the fossil record. Then in 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a museum curator in South Africa, spotted an unusual and beautiful fish in a pile of discards from the daily catch. Later she described the moment: “I picked away at a layer of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. It was pale mauvy blue, with faint flecks of whitish spots; it had an iridescent silver-blue-green sheen all over. It was covered in hard scales, and it had four limb-like fins and a strange puppy-dog tail.”
She wasn’t able to identify it, and other (male) scientists were disinclined to take her seriously. Finally she prevailed on fellow museum curator and ichthyologist J.L.B. Smith to have a look at the preserved specimen, and he identified it as a true Lazarus taxon: a coelacanth. This species of fish survived and evolved, but remained in many ways a living fossil. It’s not even particularly rare, now it’s known to exist. That first sighting became an international sensation, and the dock where Latimer found it was named in her honor, with a plaque to commemorate the event.
The Bermuda petrel or cahow (from the sound of its cry) is not nearly as ancient a species, but it was thought to have gone extinct in the 1600s, killed off by European sailors and their packs of invasive hogs. It’s a handsome bird, strikingly patterned in grey and white; it lives most of its life over the open sea, but in breeding season it nests in burrows on land, hunting by night and coming to shore during the day.
In 1935, a young petrel flew into a lighthouse and died. The bird had to have come from a breeding population, but no one seems to have gone looking for it.
Then in 1951, eighteen of them were found on Castle Harbor Island. Conservationist David Wingate established a breeding program that managed by 2000 to produce fifty mating pairs. In 2003, Hurricane Fabian severely damaged the nesting grounds; they’ve been rebuilt since, and now there are around a hundred nesting pairs.
That’s a significant achievement for a species that matures late and breeds slowly, mating for life and producing only one egg per year. It’s the national bird of Bermuda, and it’s a testimonial to the conservationists who have worked so hard to protect it and help it thrive.
When I first heard about the tree lobster, aka the Lord Howe Island stick insect and the rarest insect in the world, I got a distinct science-fictional vibe. Insectoid aliens are a definite thing (and the Bestiary will have more to say about them eventually). And here’s one right on our planet.
The tree lobster is native to a cluster of islands between Australia and New Zealand. It’s as long as a human hand, wingless, with a hard, segmented body. Bright green when it first hatches from the egg, it gradually darkens to shiny black-brown. In its heyday it was so numerous that local fishermen used it for bait.
In 1918, a ship ran aground on Lord Howe Island. There was only one human fatality, but the ship’s infestation of black rats escaped onto the island and wiped out multiple species, including the stick insect. By 1920 it was considered to be extinct.
Scientists however did not give up. They kept searching, and kept coming up empty—until 2001, when Australian scientists Dr. David Priddel and Dr. Nicholas Carlile traveled to Ball’s Pyramid, a sea stack some fourteen miles from Lord Howe Island. Climbers there had reported finding remnants of a large insect, which might be the tree lobster.
Ball’s Pyramid is a truly inhospitable environment. It’s blazingly hot, scoured by wind, and almost completely barren—except for a small cluster of melaleuca bushes. Here, miraculously, a small number of stick insects managed to survive, feeding on the leaves and reproducing parthenogenetically as well as sexually.
A DNA study confirmed that these were the same insects as the ones on Lord Howe Island. Isolated and therefore protected from invasive rats, they managed to preserve what was left of their species. Biologists captured a pair and transported them to the Melbourne Zoo, where they became the basis for a breeding program.
There are now thriving populations of stick insects in zoos around the world. The goal is to restore them to their native environment, which requires the eradication of invasive rodents on the island and the restoration of its habitat. In 2019 it seemed the goal had been met, but a small number of rats had escaped the purge. Once they’re stamped out once and for all, the tree lobster will finally be able to go home.