ShukerNature: ‘SHUKERNATURE BOOK 3: CRYSTAL PALACE DINOSAURS, JUNGLE WALRUSES, AND OTHER BELATED BLOG BEASTS’
I am very completely satisfied to announce right this moment that my 34th
e-book is now formally revealed, and as you possibly can discern from its title – ShukerNature Guide 3: Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, Jungle Walruses,
and Different Belated Weblog Beasts – it is
a 3rd compendium of my most important ShukerNature weblog posts, expanded and
up to date wherever potential, full of color and b/w illustrations, and 404 pages
lengthy.
Should you
have bought both or each of my earlier two (as I am certain you’ve gotten!!), you
will know that ShukerNature
Guide 1 was dedicated to creatures I might blogged about that
I referred to in its subtitle as cryptic. That’s, not merely cryptozoological
most often but in addition (certainly, particularly) little-known, esoteric examples – from
the likes of locust dragons, king hares, large oil-drinking cathedral spiders, and
Linnaeus’s hellish fury worm, to medieval snail-cats, glowing lightbulb
lizards, tizheruks, tsmoks, and plenty of extra choices from probably the most obscure
realms of unnatural historical past.
For ShukerNature Guide 2, I concentrated
upon creatures I might blogged about that I referred to in its subtitle as
monstrous. That’s, straddling the usually ill-defined borders between the
mythological and the mundane, fantasy and reality, reverie and actuality – akin to
residing gorgons, bottled homunculi, fossil griffins, Lewis Carroll’s mock
turtle, Harry Potter’s ambiguous amblypygid, and Physician Dolittle’s
pushmi-pullyu, the Large Gray Man of Ben MacDhui, Wisconsin’s large grasshoppers,
South America’s photographed however non-existent ‘ape’, and all method of different
fascinating if macabre curiosities and caprices from the shadowy hinterlands of
darkest zoology.
My first two ShukerNature
compilation books (© Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publications)
For
this current, third ShukerNature
e-book, nonetheless, I elected to veer off into a really completely different course when
choosing its contents as drawn from my weblog. I have been an expert
cryptozoological researcher and author for nearly 40 years now, so, as you possibly can
think about, I’ve coated an unlimited array of topics throughout that prolonged time period.
But nonetheless many I do doc, there are all the time numerous others jostling for
place on the literary sidelines, impatiently agitating to safe their place
in a future e-book or article of mine. Of those, there are a variety that I’ve
totally meant to weblog about for a few years, however for a mess of various
causes I’ve by some means by no means obtained round to doing so despite simply how a lot
they’ve all the time fascinated me. Equally, there are topics that my many
readers down via the years have persistently requested me to weblog about however
which once more, inexplicably, I’ve by no means truly performed so.
Throughout
the prolonged, enforced intervals of social lockdown necessitated by the Covid-19
pandemic, nonetheless, I made a decided effort to rectify my earlier
procrastination regarding these undeservedly delayed topics, by researching
and running a blog about as a lot of them as potential. Having now performed so with a
sizeable choice, it’s these, due to this fact, that represent the theme of this
third ShukerNature e-book – which in
flip safeguards them from the uncertainties of ongoing on-line existence by
preserving them all the time in print.
They
embody such long-awaited subjects because the awe-inspiring Crystal Palace dinosaur statues
that I visited and photographed over a decade in the past however by no means wrote up afterwards
(however which are actually the topic of my e-book’s spectacular wraparound cowl – the very
first such cowl that has ever graced any of my books), my private (and
undoubtedly controversial, iconoclastic, heterodox) views relating to the
(in)well-known Surgeon’s {Photograph} apparently depicting an unknown object in Loch
Ness, the large however mysterious animal head found in an historical Egyptian
boat, and the muddle of misidentification surrounding Lake Dakataua’s aquatic
migo.
Longstanding buddy and superior artist Anthony Wallis’s
beautiful portrait of the Nandi bear that he ready completely for inclusion in
this newest e-book of mine – thanks Ant! (© Anthony Wallis)
Plus the
Nandi bear specimen that was truly examined by two of the world’s foremost
scientists earlier than it mysteriously vanished, the officially-impossible elephant
hybrid whose existence proved all of the specialists flawed, the wry comedy of
zoological errors enshrouding the large however hysterical imperial flea, in addition to
an eclectic assemblage of jungle walruses, flying monkeys, hairless hyaenas, Koch’s
monstrous Missourium and horrid Hydarchos, Beebe’s black-and-white thriller
manta ray, the large lizards of Papua, a tenacious tomb-shattering pterodactyl,
and much extra too.
So
many of those curious, charismatic topics have been a very long time coming, I
freely confess – however now that they are
lastly right here so that you can examine and ponder over, I hope very a lot that, as
with all one of the best issues in life, you may take into account them properly definitely worth the wait. Extra
particulars regarding my e-book might be discovered on its devoted web page right here,
in my official web site.
As all the time, my new e-book might be ordered straight
via Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and different on-line bookstores,
or ordered by way of your native bodily bookstore anyplace.
Classic
engraving of 19th-Century sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins’s Crystal
Palace studio in 1853, containing a few of his accomplished prehistoric animal statues
(public area)