Publications

Monstrous animals occupied a prominent role in the imaginations of the 18th and early 19th century European settlers in what would become the United States of America. This preoccupation with monsters among early Americans is clearly reflected in the life and career of Thomas Jefferson. A close examination of Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), scientific papers prepared for the American Philosophical Society, documentation relating to the Louisiana Purchase, financing of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and personal correspondence all reveal a persistent obsession with living mastodons, giant moose, and colossal lions among other curious creatures. As a key American representative of the western intellectual tradition known as the Enlightenment, Jefferson’s conviction that the North American interior harbored such monstrous forms of undiscovered animal life may seem counterintuitive as one would presume Jefferson would be nothing but skeptical of the reality of fantastic beasts. However, Jefferson saw evidence for the reality of such hitherto unclassified species of megafauna in an amalgamation of fragmentary fossil remains, euhemerist interpretations of Indigenous American legends, and tall tales told by early pioneers; the same type of ephemeral evidence marshaled by today’s cryptozoologists to prove the existence of such creatures as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. It is with this later observation in mind that this dissertation seeks to reframe Jefferson as a pioneering cryptozoologist while also considering the important role which cryptozoological monster lore has played in the formation of American culture.

This essay's goal is to elucidate the role that cryptozoology, a field related to heterodox palaeoscience, has played in Japan, via key films in the Godzilla series; a popular example of Japanese cryptozoological fiction. This will work to reframe the discussion around cryptozoology as one not premised exclusively on western cultural assumptions about the relationship between science, modernity and myth while also demonstrating that the circumstances which have resulted in the palaeontologically heterodox claims of cryptozoologists are not unique to western culture.