Geography of New Caledonia a refugium, in effect a biological "Noah's Ark", an island home to both unique living plants and animals and also to its own special fossil endowment. Birds such as the crested and almost flightless kagu (French, "cagou") "Rhynochetos jubatus", whose closest relative may be the distantly related sunbittern of South America, and plants such as "Amborella trichopoda", the only known member of the most basal living branch of flowering plants, make this island a treasure trove and a critical concern for biologists and conservationists. The island was home to horned fossil turtles ("Meiolania mackayi") and terrestrial fossil crocodiles ("Mekosuchus inexpectatus")
Legendary creature historian Richard Kieckhefer explains, "Magic is not meant to work but to express wishes, or to encode in symbols a perception of how things do or should work." Legendary creature A legendary, mythical, or mythological creature, traditionally called a fabulous beast or fabulous creature, is a fictitious, imaginary and often supernatural animal, often a hybrid, sometimes part human, whose existence has not or cannot be proved and that is described in folklore or fiction but also in historical accounts before history became a science. In the classical era, monstrous creatures such as the cyclops and the Minotaur appear in heroic