More of those awful "Things!" On April 1st, no less, which is very appropriate for one particular "Thing" profiled in this second compilation of assorted Sanderson articles on assorted and sundry THINGS! The big "Thing" in this one is the giant penguin of Clearwater Beach, Florida, which stomped its way around town back in 1948 and left quite the impression on Sanderson, who analyzed its prints so thoroughly he actually upset the original plans of the local hoaxers responsible, who had wanted to fake a dinosaur. But the heavy iron stompers that Tony Signorini and Al Williams used for footprints were so unwieldy that Sanderson determined the resulting waddling gait must have belonged to a more cumbersome creature, such as ... a gigantic prehistoric penguin. The rest, as they say, was some especially colorful local history.
 |
| Our man Sanderson ... |
 |
| And Tony Signorini, wannabe dinosaur |
After such a dynamite story, even something like the ol' Patterson Film seems old hat, even if it was hot off the presses in 1969. Sanderson has reams of detailed reasoning to persuade us that whatever the "Thing" is that Roger Patterson filmed in 1967, it wasn't human! But we've heard all that before. Maybe it's hard to appreciate nowadays what Sanderson did, given that so much of modern cryptozoology grew directly out of his many articles and dispatches from around the globe, on real life Bigfoots and living dinosaurs and flash frozen mammoths. In so many cases, he established the terrain of the anti-establishment weird science that dare concern itself with those "Things" ...
Pyramid Books, 1969
Much to chew on.
ReplyDelete