Tara Isabella Burton at The Hedgehog Review:
Like its Enlightenment-era forebears, contemporary cryptozoology is rooted in that same hunger for strangeness, and for an enchanted world. It’s telling that the contemporary iteration of the phenomenon saw its first major resurgence during the wider postwar optimism of 1950s—when Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans, often lauded as one of the forefathers of the field, published On the Track of Unknown Animals in 1955. (Heuvelmans also coined the terms cryptozoology and cryptid.) Featuring entries dedicated to the abominable snowman and Nandi bears alongside examinations of platypuses and gorillas, Heuvelmans’s book celebrates the potential of a world teeming with creatures the scientific record has not yet ossified into fact.
“The world is by no means thoroughly explored,” Heuvelmans writes in his introduction. “It is true that we know almost all its geography, there are no more large islands or continents to be discovered.
more here.