A lot of people believe aliens, crypt-zoological creatures and various paranormal phenomena based on anecdotal evidence that currently are believed to be mythological by the scientific community at large due to lack of evidence . But presumably if one of these things actually existed eventually there will be scientifically verifiable evidence of their existence. Some hunter wouldbag Bigfoot, and sell his body to a university, or a test would be developed that could reproducibly demonstrate psychic powers. At that point the creature of phenomena will no longer be mythical but would generally be accepted as existing.
My question is has that ever actually happened. I’m not talking about a scientific theory that is initially rejected by then later accepted, like plate tectonics. I’m talking about something where a bunch of lay people say I’ve seen such and such, the scientific community at large scoffs at them saying that those people are loonies, but later the thing is actually proved to exist.
Komodo dragons, Platypus, okapi, gorillas, and manatee were all thought not to exist despite reports and in the case of the platypus even after a carcass was was dismissed as a forgery.
I’m not sure that the platypus, okapi and manatee rise to the status status of a mythological creature, but surely dragons and human-like monsters do.
Not exactly what you’re asking for, but folklorist Adrienne Mayor has argued, pretty convincingly, that the mythological Griffin is based on fossils that were found of early ceratopsians, such as Protoceratops and Psitticasaurus. The “Eagle Beaks” and “Bird-like Talons” are characteristic of those dinosaurs. Imagination filled in the eagle’s bodies and wings.
Similarly, the Roc of Arabian folklore (and especially the stories of Sinbad the Sailor), it has been suggested, were inspired by the finding of bones and fossil eggs of the Aepyornis (“Elephant Bird”) on Madagascar.
Incidentally, although you’d think that dinosaurs might lie behind accounts of dragons, the story is more complicated than that. There are multiple sources for dragon legends. Where they can reliably be associated with fossils, those fossils are invariably much later ones of giant mammals – wooly rhinoceros and the like.
Similarly, there are multiple roots for the story of the Cyclops, but one intriguing thread suggests that skulls of elephants , with the large nasal cavity in the front, suggested a giant one-eyed humanoid giant.
You seriously expect me to believe that a beaver with a duck bill that’s a mammal but it lays eggs is real? Pfft. Gotta be some kind of long-running hoax.
(or as Robin Williams used to say, it’s proof that God does drugs)
As far as natural phenomenon go, rogue waves were thought to be mythical until fairly recently. It’s only in the last few decades that they have been taken seriously. Before then, whenever sailors and sea captains would talk about huge waves that they experienced, they were laughed at. Some of the early research (a few decades ago) into rogue waves was actually hampered by that. Sailors and sea captains were so used to being laughed at that they were very reluctant to open up to anyone about their experiences. Even scientists who took the phenomenon seriously were often belittled by other scientists.
These days, you can go onto youtube and see videos of rogue waves slamming into ships. Kinda hard to dismiss that as an old captain’s tale.
I’d actually heard that the Roc legend came from ostriches (real live ones). Adult ostriches look sort of like babies of other bird species, in some ways… but if that’s how big the chick is, what must the adult be like?
When Tasmania was first explored in the late eighteenth century, explorers reported seeing a strange creature that was part cat, part dog: it had the markings of a tiger and the shape of a wolf. Such reports ere dismissed for years, until a living specimen was finally produced.
Never common to begin with, it was hunted to extinction by 1937. Today, reports of thylacines still living in the bush are common. Such reports have been dismissed as wishful thinking, thus proving what goes around truly does come around.
There was a science fiction story, by Larry Niven I think, with the premise that ostriches are neotenous rocs. But I hadn’t heard that such a correlation was made in real life.
I was going to post this. The story is “Bird in the Hand”. It’s in the time-travel universe of Svetz. The stories can be found in The Flight of the Horse or more recently Rainbow Mars.
The ancient city of Angkor Wat was considered mythical until it was discovered. The Ceolecanth was thought to be extinct for millions of years before we found a live specimen.
Giant squid are also a good candidate as a real source for apparently mythical sea monsters.
Well, the Vu Quang Ox sort of fits. In Cambodia there was a rumour of agilled antelopeor deer, that could breathe underwater. No one could ever produce one, but the rare sightings were frustratingly consistent. It was put down as oral history of a creature that had been gone for generations, and exaggerated in the telling.
The creature was finally found in Vietnam in 1992. It doesn’t actually have gills, but it’s not an unreasonable interpretation of their appearance.
