Published in 1993, Karl Shuker’s The Lost Ark was the book everyone involved in cryptozoological research had long been waiting for: a compendium of all major (and many not so major) zoological finds of the 20th century.

Ten years down the line, a menagerie of new large mammals from Vietnam, hordes of new South American monkeys, new whales(!), and even a new species of cœlacanth demonstrate not only that (as Heuvelmans said) “the great days of zoology are not done”, but that an updated version of Shuker’s book is a necessity.

The New Zoo includes all of these new animals and more, though those expecting a complete review of all post-1993 new or rediscovered taxa will be disappointed. Given that the majority of new species are obscure insects, fish, frogs, rodents and lizards, such an undertaking would result in a gargantuan, implausibly technical volume.

New and little-known gems in the book include Shuker’s coverage of Lipophrys heuvelmansi (a blenny named in 1986), the predatory sponge Abestopluma, a spiny anteater named after David Attenborough and even an animal (a marine invertebrate called a loriciferan) named after Shuker himself.

The new stars of the cryptozoological stage - the Saola or Vu Quang ox, multitudinous new muntjacs and other new Vietnamese mammals - are reviewed in an impressive synthesis and Shuker rightly portrays the Saola as the Okapi of our age. But these are just a few of tens of new creatures that appear here: the updates and pages of new text mean that The New Zoo is the substantial update we were promised.

A criticism of The Lost Ark was that it included a few creatures (namely Homo pongoides, Ameranthropoides loysi, thylacine and Glaucous macaw) whose existence remained unverified, or whose possible rediscovery was unconfirmed. These have been removed from The New Zoo and I suspect that those unfamiliar with Shuker’s writings may be unaware of any connection between the book’s contents and cryptozoology. The implication from the introduction and conclusion, however, is that the many new discoveries support the existence of cryptids. Well, maybe, but if the existence of cryptids is to be verified without reason for doubt, then high standards for allocating and describing type specimens should be emphasised. Shuker has been a bit naughty, then, in including in The New Zoo a few animals that have yet to be confirmed as definitive new taxa (a new coati, a giant loris, the quang khem or slow-running deer, the enormous fish of Lake Hanas and the deep-sea fish reported by William Beebe among them), meaning that he risks repeating the mistake of The Lost Ark.

Harking back to Heuvelmans’ derision of “Cuvier’s rash dictum”, Shuker hammers home the point that those who deny the possible future discovery of more new species are blinkered and naïve. But has any zoologist really said this in recent decades? I suppose someone might have, but my own experience indicates that the discovery of new living species is a fairly routine thing. Certainly the figures show that we should be expecting the discovery of multiple new species for quite a while yet, even among well-studied groups like mammals (an average of 17 new mammal species per year were described 1981–1991).

I take Shuker’s point, though, that the recent dates of so many zoological discoveries have gone largely unacknowledged. Furthermore, by presenting these many cases together, there are valuable messages for conservation.

While most cryptozoologists will be overawed by Shuker’s command of the technical literature, minor inaccuracies and oversights mean that The New Zoo should be used as an introduction, not as a definitive work. For example, in his discussion of the resurrection of the Desert warthog, Shuker only cites articles from BBC Wildife magazine and not the technical papers on the subject, even though the first of these was published in 1993. He uses the generic name Chœropsis for the Pygmy hippo despite the fact that most mammalogists (including hippo experts) favour the older name Hexaprotodon and the claim that the Tasman beaked whale is the most primitive living member of its group is contradicted by morphological and molecular data. The Mottle-faced tamarin (named in 1951) is still missing from Shuker’s discussion of new South American primates (as it was in The Lost Ark) and his use of the Linnæan system - and consequent emphasis of the importance of phyla - creates the impression that this is the predominant taxonomic scheme used by zoologists today. These are pedantic criticisms though.

The New Zoo is attractive and user-friendly. Many of the photos are new, as are many of the paintings, though some of the latter are unimpressive. Shuker’s writing, as always, is vibrant and euphonious and, despite my comments, the text is well supported by hundreds of references.

Even those who know The Lost Ark inside-out will find this volume a must-have, and it should prove required reading for everyone interested in the history of zoological discovery, and in our perception of biodiversity. It’s a shame that Atretochoana eiselti (a two-foot-long lungless worm-like amphibian, named in 1995) was excluded, but then you can’t have everything.