Bernard heuvelmans biography

Often referred to as the Father of Cryptozoology, Bernard Heuvelmans was born on October 10, in Le Havre, France to a Dutch mother and a Belgian father in exile.

His interest in unknown animals was original sparked as a young child after reading several science fiction adventures such as Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, a book which has influenced the lives of many well known cryptozoologists.

At age 23 Bernard Heuvelmans obtained a doctor’s title in zoological sciences from the University Lebre of Brussels, his thesis was dedicated to the classification of the hitherto unclassifiable teeth of the aardvark, Orycteropus afer, a unique African mammal.

Over the next few years Heuvelmans spent his time writing about the history of science, publishing many scientific works in the Bulletin of the Royal Museum of Natural History of Belgium, until he was called up for military service and captured by the Germ