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Wednesday 1 May 2013

More on Mosasaur Sightings


http://kriis.com/Mosasaur/mosasaur.html

Message #5154 of 8203 from the Yahoo group Frontiers of Zoology:

Russian Antarctic Sea Serpents from Pravda
Posted by Dale Drinnon, January 9,2010  9:30 PM

There have been several reports of Sea Serpents in waters of the Southern Indian Ocean made by Russian whalers and exploratory vessels, and they are uniformlydescribed as snake-shaped, laterally-undulating and an overall light browncolor. They are supposed to be of very large size and they chase whales: thatwould mean about a hundred feet long and chasing small-to-medium-sized whales,in schools of about 30 individual whales. They are suspected in other areas such as East of Australia and around Tierra Del Fuego: and some accounts make them out to be the culprits chasing herds of small whales ashore to beach themselves en masse. I was looking for some good representative sightings on the internet but what I was turning up was clouded by some very bad speculation about the Sea Monsters driving the whales ashore by mental telepathy, by thinking bad thoughts at the whales. They are called Leviathans at one site and one of the other sources listed in the CFZ archives calls them "Sea Lions" but that source assumes they are like vastly enlarged  ordinary sea lions.At any rate, I think this is the same big-mosasaur that the U-Boat captains wereseeing aroundthe North Sea and Irish sea. Early reports of this type were listedin Ivan Sanderson's archivesat the SITU, but they were routine press clippingsreprinted from the Soviet sources such asPravda was then. The more interesting part is that they are big, snakelike, laterally-undulating creatures and their feeding behavoir had been observed. RARE observations also made byJapanese ships also confirm these observations. They are called Sea Dragons and JamesSweeney has an account in his book on Sea Monsters. Best Wishes, Dale D.

Item from Ivan Sanderson's files
#21. Off Soviet Research Station, Antarctica. "Sea serpent". 49' long. Light brown. Moved like
snake with "convulsive movements". Labelled a "sea snake".
http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2011/05/peeking-at-ivans-situ-files-meaningless_31.html

A later Russian reference said that "a dozen" report of the same type in Antarctic waters were known,
 and there seem to be similar reports of creatures made in the cold waters North of Iceland and up to Spoitzbergen: there is however the pretty good counter-claim that such stories in the arctic are based
 on rotted corpses of big sharks and whales looking like "Dinosaurs" since the mention is made that
 some of them are "Furry"

desceliers antique map

Message #5017 of 8203 at the Yahoo Group Frontiers-of-Zoology

Patagonian Monsters, Additional
Thu Dec 17, 2009 7:49 am

Some of Austin Whittall's illustrations are quite interesting since they seem to
indicate a type of Patagonian crocodilian or caiman. I suppose this might be one
of the "Dragons" reported by early explorers. Needless to say it would be quite unusual to find
ordinary crocodilians in such a cold place. Are they describing the type of
Sea-Serpents Heuvelmans called Marine Saurians? Some of the illustrations show
rounded foreflipper-like "Wings" and perhaps they are meant to represent
Mosasaurs.

Best Wishes, Dale D.
From Dale Drinnon's Amended Cryptozoological Checklist:
Marine Saurian;
Heuvelmans created the category but did not make several important internal distinctions. There is the standard version which he describes as 40 to 60 feet long and which seems likely to be a mosasaur, but there are also reports of a larger form with a head characteristically 10 feet long or longer, and with a total length of 75 to 100 feet reported. This could be a different species, and also has different physiology and behavior, being a deeper-diver, more cold-tolerant and apparently at least sometimes a specialist predator on small whales. Russian whalers have evidently seen it chasing pods of smaller whales in Antarctic waters. I would include the one killed by the crew of the Monongahela in this category: I have subsequently found that this is also Shucker's opinion. Incidentally, the original version of the Monongahela report, verifiably in the captain's correct name and in his handwriting, is preserved in a New England shipping museum and differs from the version that Heuvelmans had access to.




Bakunawa
Bakunawa is the Phillipine version of the Taniwha and here it is represented as the cosmological dragon which swallows the sun during an eclipse, something which possibly relates the Southern Asian Rahu with the Hebrew Rahab (=Leviathan) at any rate the real creature that sightings are based on is the local type od whale-eater and likely to be a large mosasaur from the reports.

9 comments:

  1. I notice that the illustration of a seaserpent-as-mosasaur is similar to the older drawings of mosasaurs with frills or crests running down their back; I believe this idea has been debunked by 21st century science (right?)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nope, it has NOT been debunked, it is merely unfashionable. There was always the possibility that Mosasaurs need some sort of vertical midback stabilization while swimming (same argument Heuvelmans makes for zueglodons) and thus it would NOT be an instance where there was NOTHING on the back. Hydrodynamics decrees otherwise. Besides the reports DO specify the creatures that are sighted by them have a long low fin down the length of the spine

    ReplyDelete
  3. So you are telling me that modern palaeontologists only care about making reconstruction's of prehistoric animals look "fashionable?"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. God, you're so simplistic!
      Few things in life are ever "Only" one thing or another. Most decisions take into account multiple considerations. Having said that there IS certainly that element of being fashionable implicit in making reconstructions. You could say that when you fall into tight goose-stepping formation as directed by the skeptical community you are only being fashionable then. It is not a reasoned, rational response, it is conformity with what is taken to be the majority opinion. And the majority opinion is not necessarily better than the alternative, it is only fashionable, if you follow my drift.

      Delete
  4. "Joe Richardson" has just attempted to add the mere opinion that Mosasaurs should not have a long medial dorsal fin. I did not allow it because we are not dealing with opinions or guesses here. Mere opinions are immaterial, no matter how many people share that opinion. And we have done the discussion to death while nothing substantial is being added in the way of evidence to the discussion at this point. When there is any meaningful input on the debate I shall make mention of the fact, but merely saying "popular opinion has it ..." means nothing in a realistic sense. And I have been trying to make that point for some time now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He has tried it again by pointing out he had not said "popular opinion has it" but he had said "Most Paleontologists feel"": Joe you missed the point. That statement is the EXACT equivalent of "popular opinion is" and since we are talking about opinions NOT based on direct fossil evidence, the opinions are still baseless and useless, and it doers not matter WHO says so. Joe., you are appealing to authority. These people cannot know positively one way or the other about such a matter. The opinion still carries no weight and I wish you'd sit and have a think about it before you go posting again.

      There are good reasons for thinking otherwise and I have stated them. It means nothing that none of your experts realizes that a dorsal stabilizer of some sort is necessary.

      Delete
    2. To "Joe Robinson", you are obviously STILL not paying any attention. The statement means nothing if it is not based on any evidence to back it up. There is nothing to back up the statement and therefore the statement does not matter HOW many people might say so. What do you think, the experts arte speaking from divine inspiration?

      Stop being an idiot and I will allow your comments through. I reserve the right to stop any or all of your statements on the basis of your prior miserably poor track record. And I have already told you that I consider you to be an irritant.

      Delete
    3. No, Joe, NOT Information, LACK of information. Your sources are WRONG. Now that we have new solid evidence that Mosasaurs had tail fins like Ichthyosaurs, it is now clearer than ever that SOME form of a dorsal fin was necessarily present. Please refer to the more recent blog posting on the matter "mosasaurs in Real Life".
      You get nowhere by being a pigheaded bigot. No more messages will be posted to this blog article on the topic. You, Joe, are badly stuck in a rut.

      Delete
  5. My father and another soldier watched a forty foot mosasaur swim around in a slow moving river in the central highlands of Vietnam in 1968. He told the story for years and no one believed him until I faxed a drawing he made of it to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. The head of the department of paleontology called and confirmed the drawing was a mosasaur. He said the creature did not have a dorsal fin, but did have ridges along its tail. They watched it for 2 hours.

    ReplyDelete

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