Dale Drinnon: Especially since he must have made it up out of his head, since he did not have a prior photograph or even artwork that he could copy
Scott Mardis: Much less a plesiosaur skull.
{Note especially that there is a certain peak at the back and on top of the Surgeon's photograph image and also such a projection on the Plesiosaur's skull in the same exact place.-DD]
The unmodified photographic image from the Daily Mail is reprinted below:
Scott Mardis adds:
Alistair Boyd and Martin have never released the tapes of their interviews with Christian Spurling so other investigators could evaluate them.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
DALE DRINNON: CryptoClydes
Since the remains of possible post-Cretaceous Plesiosaurs seem to indicate an
as-yet-not-properly named genus (or closely related genera) related to the well
known Cryptoclidus at about 25-35 feet long, I have done some comparisons
between some depictions of the Loch Ness Monster and reconstructions of that 
genus.
The first one of these was done at the beginning of the
Frontiers-of-Zoology group and compared Arthur Grant's land sighting to the
Cryptoclidus represented in Walking With Dinosaurs. This was a paste-up
I called 'CryptoClyde' and was meant to demonstrate that Grant's sighting
corresponded in proportions and dimensions to the reconstructed plesiosaur. I
have cannibalised that comparison into the larger version below. I added the
insert with the 'Surgeon's Photo' from Loch Ness on the strength of Paul
LeBlond's analysis of the photo from CRYPTOZOOLOGY, in which he estimated the
size of the thing being depicted as about four f
eet high, six feet long when stretched out. In
another article in CRYPTOZOOLOGY, LeBlond had compared the 'Surgeons Photo' to
the Mansi photo from Lake Champlain and found them to be similar enough to most
likely be the same sort of creature.
eet high, six feet long when stretched out. In
another article in CRYPTOZOOLOGY, LeBlond had compared the 'Surgeons Photo' to
the Mansi photo from Lake Champlain and found them to be similar enough to most
likely be the same sort of creature.
The neck in the 'Surgeon's Photo' is also just about the same size as Grant
had reported. I add another comparison with the Rhines AAS underwater head and
neck photo, of similar proportions but estimated as twice the size, and then
another comparison with the Rhines head and neck to another reconstruction of
Cryptoclidus.
Frankly, I do not like the way the head and neck in the 'Surgeon's photo' are aligned if it is actually a plesiosaur, but then perhaps current theory on the flexibility of Plesiosaur necks does not cover living Plesiosaurs, n'est-pas? I also did a very exhaustive comparison of the head and neck in the photo to various kinds of waterbirds native to the area and none of them match at all well. It is the opinion of both Mackal and Coleman that the photo is authentic but represents a bird in the water. Such a bird must therefore be an unknown animal in itself.
There have been attacks made on both the 'Surgeon's Photo' and on Rhine's underwater photo at Loch Ness, most infamously with the assertion that Christian Spurling confessed to hoaxing the 'Surgeon's Photo' on his deathbed. Christian Spurling's account 'frames' the Daily Mail for hoaxing the photo to boost readership and is a libelous statement. Christian Spurling did not make a deathbed declaration and the account shows that he had no real knowledge of the photos in question - specifically the fact that there was more than one photo, with the object in different configurations, and not possibly the same object photographed twice.
Frankly, I do not like the way the head and neck in the 'Surgeon's photo' are aligned if it is actually a plesiosaur, but then perhaps current theory on the flexibility of Plesiosaur necks does not cover living Plesiosaurs, n'est-pas? I also did a very exhaustive comparison of the head and neck in the photo to various kinds of waterbirds native to the area and none of them match at all well. It is the opinion of both Mackal and Coleman that the photo is authentic but represents a bird in the water. Such a bird must therefore be an unknown animal in itself.
There have been attacks made on both the 'Surgeon's Photo' and on Rhine's underwater photo at Loch Ness, most infamously with the assertion that Christian Spurling confessed to hoaxing the 'Surgeon's Photo' on his deathbed. Christian Spurling's account 'frames' the Daily Mail for hoaxing the photo to boost readership and is a libelous statement. Christian Spurling did not make a deathbed declaration and the account shows that he had no real knowledge of the photos in question - specifically the fact that there was more than one photo, with the object in different configurations, and not possibly the same object photographed twice.
Besides that the fact that is the "Admission to guilt of a Hoax" is only a popular
legend and is the same exact story told in the case of the "Admission to guilt of
the Manufactured model of the Minnesota Iceman" and so on down the line. The story always follows an exact Folkloric pattern: the "Confession" only comes out after the person making the confession is dead, and ordinarily the blame is not really on him, it is on some associated person (usually a relative) also conveniently dead:the Hoax is always a joke that gets out of hand and so is never admitted to in the person's lifetime and there is usually a specified physical gimmick used to create the false impression, now also conveniently missing. The person
making the "Admission" always screws up when he gets some of the details
describing the original case wrong. And people are always "Admitting" to things
they never did, as witness all the false "Confessions" that the LA Police
department received in the Black Dalia murder-and-mutilati on case: the majority
of "Confessions" were not even aware that the body had been mutilated. In the case of "The Surgeon's Photograph" at lLoch Ness there is a series of several other claimants that also similarly claim to have created the hoax "Only attributed toWilson" and the fact of the matter is that they cannot all be genuine truthful statements: more likely, none of them are.
There have also been statements made that a toy submarine made of materials
at hand in the 1930s with a monster's-head superstructure would be top-heavy and
tip over rather than stay afloat. A rather more peculiar problem is that there
seems to have been no prior model he could have copied to look like the 'Sea Monster'
in the photo: I have not seen any previous Plesiosaur reconstructions that
actually match it. After the image of the photo was established in the
imagination of the public, it seemed obvious to say that "I made a model of how
the Loch Ness Monster looked" but it was not possible to say that before
hand! [Emphasis added in this reprinting-DD]
As to the Rhines AAAS underwater photo from the mid-1970s, it has been criticised by saying the head is not obviously continuous to the neck and that it needs to be aligned in the vertical plane. The critics that say this then go on to re-orientate the photo in the horizontal plane, inverted of its usual orientation. They then say it is a photograph of the bottom. It does not match the other photos more obviously showing the bottom, but the real problem is that saying this destroys their own argument. If the photo is indeed meant to be horizontal, then there is no reason why you need to say it must be vertical, and if it represents the bottom, then the tow parts really are continuous and the apparent break is only a trick of the shadows. Which is what supporters had been saying all along.
I am not saying that the 'Surgon's Photograph' is necessarily NOT a hoax; what I am saying is that it is consistent with other evidence and that the exact appearance as presented could not have been known before hand. And in the matter of analysis I defer to LeBlond.
As to the Rhines AAAS underwater photo from the mid-1970s, it has been criticised by saying the head is not obviously continuous to the neck and that it needs to be aligned in the vertical plane. The critics that say this then go on to re-orientate the photo in the horizontal plane, inverted of its usual orientation. They then say it is a photograph of the bottom. It does not match the other photos more obviously showing the bottom, but the real problem is that saying this destroys their own argument. If the photo is indeed meant to be horizontal, then there is no reason why you need to say it must be vertical, and if it represents the bottom, then the tow parts really are continuous and the apparent break is only a trick of the shadows. Which is what supporters had been saying all along.
I am not saying that the 'Surgon's Photograph' is necessarily NOT a hoax; what I am saying is that it is consistent with other evidence and that the exact appearance as presented could not have been known before hand. And in the matter of analysis I defer to LeBlond.
REFERENCES
CRYPTOZOOLOGY vol. 1, winter 1982
"An Estimate of the Dimensions of the Lake Champlain Monster from the Length of Adjacent Waves in the Mansi Photograph" Paul H. LeBlond, p. 54
CRYPTOZOOLOGY vol. 6 , 1987
"The Wilson Nessie Photo: A Size Determination Based on Physical Principles" Paul H. LeBlond and Michael J. Collins, p. 55
Le Blond is also the source for the comparison of the Wilson Nessie and Mansi Champ photos. The Champ photo depicts a much larger object but of similar shape.
Additional note: Many sources attribute a date of April 1 to the Wilson photo. The date was meant to be April 19, and what had happened was that one popular source had printed the '19' at the end of one line of text and the last digit '9' had fallen off the end of the line of type. This happened in Gould's book The Loch Ness Monster and Others, and I own a copy.
[NB, Darren Naish has recently published a revised Plesiosaur family tree on Tet Zoo which states that the more recent Plesiosaurs arising out of Cryptoclidus did go in for invading freshwater habitats and could tolerate colder water. This line either includes a longer-necked continuing lineage or there is an associated longnecked lineage which diversified at the very end of the cretaceous. This Tet Zoo posting is the topic for another Blog posting currently being held in reserve.]
All of Robert Rhines's "nessie" photos were distorted to look like plesiosaurs, as Darren Naish, Tony Harmsworth, and Adam S. Smith point out.
ReplyDeleteAsserted but certainly not demonstrated. Scott Mardis also has information forthcoming on that matter.
DeleteDoes anybody with paleontological expertise agree with your conclusion that nessie or at least some sea serpents could be plesiosaurs? It seems that whenever palaeontologists are asked about the matter they give you some kind of "handy-dandy" list of common critiques of the idea.
ReplyDeleteI'll have you know that *I* have considerable Paleontological expertise and a lifelong interest in suvch matters. Furthermore I can't say as I like your tone.
ReplyDeleteAs a matter of fact a continuing tradition of Paleontologists have been supporting the idea that some of these "Sea serpent" reports are observations of living Plesiosaurs and it goes back at least as far as Agassiz, and the list includes some pretty prominent names. Heuvelmans gives several examples in his book on Sea serpent sightings and the idea is nowhere near dead yet. And when you say " It seems that whenever palaeontologists are asked about the matter they give you some kind of 'handy-dandy' list of common critiques of the idea" you have hit the nail on the head: what you get is a pre-rehearsed blanket statement that is repeated nearly verbatim and meant to coiover all arguments which might be met with on the topic. It is not an intelligen response, it is almost robotic, and skeptics that criticise Bigfoot, or UFOs or any other kind of unorthodox topic are always going to face the same thing. I had a skeptical friend trot out the same tired and worn out exciuses against the Plesiosaur theory when he first saw that this blog entry was announced and I told him then that the blanket explanation did not fit this case, that it was making arguments against suppositions which I did not support and which were not necessary to support to get the idea across.I have my own explanations and my own theoretical framework I am presenting and I am rather insulted when I am presented with arguments which were invented to deal with somebody else's theory entirely. There is no intellectual process going on in mere parroting off somebody else's opinion anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe notion of a plesiosaur nessie still seems problematic because 1. The loch is too dark and murky to be a habitat for plesiosaurs (which had nothing to rely on but sight when hunting.) and 2. A population of plesiosaurs (which breathe air) would be too easily exposed in the loch when coming to the surface to breathe (perhaps every hour or so.)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I am not a complete skeptic of the nessie=plesiosaur idea; I would just like to hear your opinion on objections like these.
You are incorrect, Plesiosaurs relied mostly upon smell rather than sight in hunting. And I imagine that one of the functions of the long neck was to pick up vibrations caused by the motion of fishes in the water: creatures such as snakes and turtles are very good at detecting vibrations through their bodies. Please note that I am saying picking up vibrations deliberately rather than alleging that they are using sonar, that is a different process. And we have already specified that the placement of the nostrils is on the top of the head: nobody other than Maurice Burton said that this easily explains why they do not need to be seen more often breathing at the surface, all they need do is expose an area of a few square inches at the surface and that would go unnoticed in all but the most exceptional of circumstances.
DeleteAlso I am not promoting the idea of a breeding colony at Loch Ness, Lake Champlain or anywhere else inland, necessarily. I think far more likely we are seeing very rare cases of occasional individuals straying into fresh water and then staying over a period of a few years, perhaps up to an individual's lifetime (which could easily be more than a century on analogy to turtles)
Would long-necked sea serpents look like plesiosaurs if all the accounts describing the long neck being lifted out of the water vertically were ignored? What would some of these similarities be?
ReplyDeleteFair enough question. The answer is, almost none of the Longnecked SeaSerpent reports describe a head and neck actually lifted vertically at right angles with respect to the outstretched trailing rest of the backbone, and when this does happen the reports are therefore suspect. I recall discussing this with Richard Muirhead in specifying the Tyne SS report and I mentioned that the report was unusual in describing a very high, very tall and thin neck with a very long trailing "body" behind it (the total length would have been well over a hundred feet long going by the witness' estimates) and in that case I said I would prefer the explanation that the witness was viewing a waterspout.
ReplyDeleteAlmost always in Longneck reports, the neck is directed forward and submerged at one half to two thirds of the length in the water, either with the neck pointed straight ahead or up at an angle. This is almost universal in any reports where the crerature is said to be swimming in any sort of a foreward motion. The incline of the neck is most often said to be no more than 30 degrees in relation to the water's surface. nearly all reports mention a gap of submerged neck between the foreard part of the neck and the body, so there is at least that much submerged. And any reports of "Periscopes" are ordinarily only the first part of the neck (typically the first third) turned up, or the whole of the creature stalled in the water and assuming a vertical position (such as in the famous case of the Rotomahana near New Zealand)
So you see the majority of reports actually comfortably describe the way a Plesiosaur's neck was known to have worked.
I often wonder whether the neck described in long-neck sightings is more consistent with that of cryptocleidids or elasmosaurs in the way the neck is said to function.
ReplyDeleteThe specimens of supposedly surviving Plesiosaurs were assigned to a "Wastebasket" taxon and currently need to be assigned a new genus name and family. The family of late-Cryptoclidids or non-Elasmosaurian longnecked Plesiosaurs is currently in dispute: I had thought to reprint one of Darren Naish's recent blogs on PLesiosaurs in reference to the matter, but he really says very little on the classification of the fossil genera concerned in the matter. We have at best an obsolete family and genus name to go by, and some good fossils of the latest longnecked Plesiosaurs shuttled from one family to another because they do not seem to fit with the Elasmosaurs or the shorter-necked kinds. The same obsolete genus name is used in Plesiosaur fossils found in either Eocene or Pliocene strata.
ReplyDeleteYes, but I was actually asking about the osteology of the necks of elasmosaurs and cryptocleidids (Which of the two resemble messieurs more in this matter.)
ReplyDeleteIn which cae you point is moot. We are not talking about either of those groups but about a third and little-understood alternate group that was present up to the end of the Cretaceous and included the species from Antarctica, which seems to have had a more generalised neck flexibilty in all planes, a higher tolerance for fresh water and colder weather, and much more conservative proportions than the Elasmosaurs.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Dale, Tyler Stone tells us that you have examined many plesiosaur specimens yourself. Is he correct? If so, is there any indication that plesiosaurs had a hump-like structure as observed in long-neck reports.
ReplyDeleteYes I have directly examined long-necked Plesiosaur fossils and the scars of the muscle attachments on the back indicate to me what could have been hump-like structures in life. And since you are privvy to the public postings on my Facebook wall, you should have seen Scott Mardis and I discussing that matter.
ReplyDeleteThe new group from Antarctica is probably no match in size for nessie (this would be about 60 feet; a matching size for an elasmosaur, but elasmosaur anatomy is still no match.) This would likely make nessie a steriotypical cross between smaller plesiosaur types (like the new group from Antarctica) and the elasmosaurs.
ReplyDeleteThe average size for Loch Ness Monsters is nearer 30 feet long than 60. Your assertion is incorrect and your conclusion both presumptuous and unwarranted. You are getting into fallacious arguments.
DeleteIt seems to me that in the plesiosaur skull/ surgeon's photo comparison you posted the white outlining of the head does not take up all the space in the head. This would mean that at least part of the comparison is imagined. The idea that modern plesiosaurs have more flexible necks than the ancient ones is unlikely due to the slow rate at which plesiosaurs evolved over hundreds of millions of years ( this is the problem with interpreting the surgeon's photo as a plesiosaur.
ReplyDeleteThink for a second. What you just said was garbage. The skull of no animal takes up all of the space in its head. And your second statement is likewise an unwarranted assumption. You are taking pot-shots in the dark.
ReplyDelete"The average size for loch Ness monsters is nearer 30 feet than 60."
ReplyDelete1. You can't dismiss the few sightings at loch news describing a 60 foot long monster without stating a good reason or two for doing so and 2. Even if these reports could be simply dismissed, all reports of nessie's kin worldwide taken into account would describe many supposed monsters that are 60 feet or longer (and many of these witnesses saw the "creature" close up and even if not are trained in estimating the size of far away objects.)
Oh, I forgot to state that even if their were few long-neck sightings worldwide describing a monster that is 60 feet or longer, these still can't be dismissed without stating a good reason (because the witnesses are often experienced at estimating size at a far distance and the sightings are often close up.)
ReplyDeleteThey certainly CAN be dismissed if the better and closer-to estimates were consistently given as half that length. That is what happens in Loch Ness Monster sightings and most frequently in other freshwater reports world-wide. There has been criticism of Sea Serpent reports that there is no way to accurately gague their lengths at sea and the sightings could be over- estimating size. My reply to that was that the comparison of saltwater to freshwater proves it and even proves the degree of exaggeration. And even Heuvelmans admits the greater estimates of length are probably mistakenly counting the wake along with the body.
ReplyDeleteAnd an accounting of creatures said to be 60 feet long and longer shows that they are almost always "Strings of buoys" or describing things which sound like whales (the Albeona SS as example), or else are otherwise definitely not Longnecks at all. There are a couple of reports of PERISCOPES standing as much as 60 feet out of the water and these can be discounted for other reasons (One is associated with the Pauline whale-fighting SS as a followup after the main sighting and the suspicion must be that a real Sea Serpent was NOT seen then-there was almost certainly some sort of a mistake which rumour exaggerated until the crewmen were all in a sweat to fight the thing off it attacked them. It could have been something as harmless as a whale's spout, the thing is that the crewmen were already upset and anxious about the main sighting they had already seen.)
ReplyDeleteNote to kellys4boys: it has become evident that you intend to go on with a campaign of taking sniping shots at the Plesiosaur theory by adding whichever other criticisms that you might come up with periodically, at a whim and added arbitrarily on to any of the comments which you might have added previously. This is off-topic, it is irrelevant, and it is an attempt to seize control of how this blog is being run; and moreover, it is becoming an exceedingly long, drawn-out and tedious exercise in your making pointless observations followed by my pointing out that you are making pointless observations. My advice to you is to write me a long coherant letter in which your arguments are presented in an orderly fashion or, if you choose not to do that, kindly go start your own blog. If you have specific comments that are actually relevant to the material posted in the blog articles themselves, you are welcome to continue to post: but if you should pop up periodically with more "Here is another thing I just thought of", that part is just not going to be allowed through.
ReplyDeleteI differ from Dale's opinion that there are no indicators that the surgeons photo is genuine (even if there are no indicators of it being a hoax, as he says, and I can agree with that.) If there's nothing indicating that it is a hoax, and it is consistent with the rest of the evidence for longnecked sea serpents, then I believe the best and simplest conclusion we can reach is that this photo is genuine (ie, this is how to apply occam's razor to the subject.)
ReplyDeleteI believe you are mistaking cautionary language for approbation. I believe there are no indicators that it is a hoax and several very good reasons that it could be genuine (The large number of witnesses worldwide that report that shape as the shape of the Sea-Serpent they saw is a strong factor: that Ted Holliday points out we see the shape repeated on Sumerian cylinder seals I count as a VERY strong indication it could be genuine.) Therefore I tend to agree that it probably is genuine. Once again, I am not stating an absolute, it would be nonscientific to state it in absolute terms. If you state such a thing in absolute terms it ceases to be an issue of the evaluating the abailable evidence and it becomes a tenet of irrational BELIEF. There is a very specific reason for stating the matter that way.
ReplyDeleteSorry Dale; I must have misunderstood what you said.
ReplyDeleteI went to cryptozoology.com recently and I found a post written by Dick reynor which showed that the illustration of a pleaiosaur skull used in this article was distorted to fit with the "head" of the alleged monster; were you aware of this?
ReplyDeleteIf he said it about my blog he is a liar. If he says all Plesiosaur skulls are the same or even very much similar to each other he is a liar. If you are just up to making wild claims again, then it is you that is the liar. I shall take a look for myself.
DeleteHowever I was not being careful about the skull used in that comparison, I basically just picked the skull up off of a convenient illustration and popped it into place. It is possible that the illustration had been tinkered with before I found it: illustrations found on the internet frequently are. HOWEVER, that does NOT mean to say that NO Plesiosaur skull would fit the outline, because the same experiment can easily be replicated using a different alternative Plesiosaur skull.
DeleteAnd it turns out that there ARE many reconstructions of pleaiosaurs in "Surgeons photo pose" which outdate the surgeons photo (such as the famous crystal palace plesiosaur models, also close to where spurling was living at the time he supposedly faked the photo.)
ReplyDeleteShow me an exact match. Go ahead, I'm waiting
ReplyDeleteThe Crystal Palace Plesiosaurs look nothing like that. at least they don't in any photos I have ever seen. More importantly the same profile appears on a Sumerian Cylinder seal about 4000 years old and are you going to tell me that Spurling had access to THAT?
Delete