Bernard Heuvelmans
| Bernard Heuvelmans | |
|---|---|
| Born |
10 October 1916 Le Havre, France |
| Died | 22 August 2001 (aged 84) Le Vésinet, France |
| Education | PhD zoology (Free University of Brussels) |
| Occupation |
Zoologist Cryptozoologist |
| Organization | Center for Cryptozoology, International Society of Cryptozoology, Centre for Fortean Zoology |
| Spouse(s) | Monique Watteau (div. 1961) |
Bernard Heuvelmans (10 October 1916 – 22 August 2001) was a Belgian-French scientist, explorer, researcher, and a writer probably best known as "the father of cryptozoology". His 1958 book On the Track of Unknown Animals (originally published in French in 1955 as Sur la Piste des Bêtes Ignorées) is often regarded as one of the best and most influential cryptozoological works.
Heuvelmans was born on 10 October 1916, in Le Havre, France, and raised in Belgium and earned a doctorate in zoology from the Free University of Brussels (now split into the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel). Heuvelmans was a pupil of Serge Frechkop, a proponent of the Theory of Initial Bipedalism. His doctoral dissertation concerned the teeth of the aardvark, which had previously defied classification. Though earlier interested in zoological oddities, he credits a 1948 Saturday Evening Post article, "There Could be Dinosaurs", by Ivan T. Sanderson with inspiring a determined interest in unknown animals. Sanderson discussed the possibility of dinosaurs surviving in remote corners of the world.
Heuvelmans undertook a massive amount of research and wrote On the Track of Unknown Animals, considered by some the most influential work of cryptozoology in the twentieth century. In this work, which is organised geographically, a dominating theme is that folktales and legends concerning unusual and sometimes implausible creatures have often been found to have a substratum of truth. He argued that those referring to hitherto-unknown species should be investigated scientifically, and criticized researchers who dismiss such tales out of hand. One of his predictions was fulfilled with the recent identification of the African forest elephant as a new species Loxodonta cyclotis.
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