The Tasmanian Tiger: Extinct or Extant? makes Top 20

Great news!

The Tasmanian Tiger: Extinct or Extant? has made Loren Coleman's Top 20 list of best cryptozoology books for 2014.

Cryptomundo recently featured a guest blog post by anthology editor Rebecca Lang:

The last Thylacine in captivity died on September 7, 1936, ironically just two weeks shy of the species receiving protection status. In 1986, 50 years later, it would be declared extinct. By international standards it no longer exists, and is just another marsupial ghost haunting the Australian landscape following European settlement.

While Benjamin is often symbolically referred to as ‘The Last Thylacine’, in all likelihood the species persisted in the Tasmanian wilderness well into the 1930s, possibly until the 1950s. In 1980 then-Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife officer Steven Smith conducted a detailed study of sightings between 1934 and 1980, concluding of the 320 sightings, just under half could be considered good, if inconclusive.

Judging by the thousands of sightings logged by government departments and private research groups since that time, however, it may still roam remote parts of Tasmania...

New Australian book queries Tasmanian Tiger extinction...

Does the Tasmanian Tiger still roam the island state, parts of the Australian mainland, and the northern land mass of Irian Jaya-Papua New Guinea? 

Despite being hunted to extinction in the early part of the 20th century, the Tasmanian Tiger continues to stalk the imaginations of people the world over. What's more, hundreds of reports of the striped dog-like marsupial with the fearsome gaping jaw are made each year in Australia. 

In The Tasmanian Tiger: Extinct or Extant?, biologists, geneticists, naturalists, and academics explore the evidence for and against the continuing existence of Thylacinus cynocephalus.

Featuring essays by Peter Chapple, Ned Terry, Col Bailey, Bob Paddle, Nick Mooney, Tony Healy, Paul Cropper, Andrew Pask, Malcolm Smith, Gary Opit and Michael Williams.

Monster croc stalks Queensland fishermen

A 6-metre-long "man-eater sized" crocodile has stalked two Queensland fishermen while they sat in a small boat in the Hinchenbrook Channel north of Ingham.

Whitsunday man Andy Thomsen and a friend were fly fishing from their dinghy when the monster croc appeared only 2m away and "scared the s--- out of" them.

The keen angler captured the whole ordeal with a camera strapped to his head to record for his YouTube channel.

"This is a man-eater sized croc and if we had not been watching who knows what it may have done," Mr Thomsen told the Townsville Bulletin.

Over a 50 minute period the carnivorous reptile had followed them for more than 50m and then another 2km before popping up in the water beside them.

"We were sliding down the food chain," Mr Thomsen wrote in the video.

"I've never got that close to one before," he said about the encounter on the weekend.

"If it had have stayed up, I don't know what we would have done."

Despite his terrifyingly close encounter, Mr Thomsen said he would not be giving fishing away any time soon.

Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/national/2014/12/04/11/20/queensland-fishermen-stalked-by-6m-man-eating-croc#RwhCVsBKiV4MlgDf.99