Cryptozoology (from Greek κρυπτός, kryptos, "hidden" + zoology; literally, "study of hidden animals") is the search for or acquisition of evidence of animals, plants or entities who existence has not been proven in a scientific manner. The things cryptozoologists study are often referred to as cryptids. This includes looking for living examples of animals that are considered extinct, such as non-avian dinosaurs such as Mokele-Mbembe, thought to be a dinosaur living in the Congo. Creatures whose existence lacks physical evidence but which appear in myths, legends, or are reported, such as Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster and Chupacabra and many more. Sometimes wild animals dramatically outside their normal geographic ranges, such as Alien Big Cats. Cryptozoology is not a recognized branch of zoology or a discipline of science. It is looked at as a pseudoscience. See Also: Cryptobotany (the study of cryptid plants instead of cryptid animals)
There is debate over what exactly falls into the realm of cryptozoology. Some of the best-known types of cryptid include cryptohominids, sea serpents, lake monsters, neodinosaurs, and alien big cats, and important categories recognised by cryptozoologists include undescribed but ethnoknown species, alleged Lazarus taxa recognised only from history or the fossil record, occurrences of known species outside of their recognised range, and non-taxonomic variants of known species. Two major specialist subfields of cryptozoology are hominology, the study of hairy humanoids, and dracontology, the study of sea serpents and lake monsters. Supposedly-supernatural "animals," also called zooform phenomena, are frequently referred to as cryptids.
The pursuit of unknown animals was called romantic zoology in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, and was codified by Bernard Heuvelmans in On the Track of Unknown Animals (1955). Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson both independently coined the term "cryptozoology," which was first used in 1959. The International Society of Cryptozoology, which published the journal Cryptozoology, was active from 1982 to 1998, and has been succeeded by the International Cryptozoology Society, while the Centre for Fortean Zoology currently publishes the Journal of Cryptozoology. Researches into unknown animals and discoveries of large animals which occurred before the 1950s, particularly in the face of doubt, are sometimes retroactively described as cryptozoological.