Frontiers of Zoology: "Megalotaria longicollis"

Sunday, 8 September 2013

"Megalotaria longicollis"

Jay Cooney was circulating this on Facebook last night. I saw it and I said "If you're talking Hoy Sea Serpent, I'll buy that" It is an artwork of the Cryptid "Megalotaria longicollis" by Utahraptor on Deviant Art.
http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/artists/154174153?view_mode=2

Utahraptor did add "the real Nessie" to this but this is clearly NOT the same as the Loch Ness Monster since for one thing nothing like the male has ever been reported on Loch Ness. They are very like some IRISH sightings however, and probably some Australian and Tasmanian "Bunyips" also. Two things of note: like real sea lions the neck of the male is very THICK which is actually specified in reports of this type. And the length of the neck of the female is no more than four times its diameter. That's important, it would be the norm for this species and much shorter than the long necks of the Longnecks. The female is a mite too thin though, she has probably just pupped. As Heuvelmans notes, the big male is not more than three times the length of the pup and since we have a good substantial record of a young one about seven feet long, the big males would be expected to be twenty feet long and maybe a little more.

Since the female as drawn here does bear a resemblance to the Parson's Long Necked seal reprinted below, this is a plausible enough connection (The other drawing shows a plumper body and my feeling is also this female should have a plumper body.)

The hinder flippers are somewhat stylized but not too badly. This species has small spiky ear-pinnas but not the erectile nostrils stated by Heuvelmans. it has normal seal-like whiskers. The female could also have more developed hair on the neck but here it is slicked down as it is characteristically. Male shaggy fur and mostly reddish brown (a possible black circle around the eye is noted by Costello)and the female is more greyish-brown with darker spots.(The darker spots are still there but harder to see in the males which are uniformly darker overall)

"Long Necked Walrus" from Biological Marginalia, via Jay Cooney

They are huge seals, not quite so large as elephant seals but at least as large as walruses. Besides the
two geographic areas I mention, there is evidence of them in the North Sea and around Scandinavia, possibly near Florida (I am an NOT including Thomas Helm's SS but others would certainly include it), off South Africa and possibly off Patagonia. Austin Whittall speculates about Long necked sea lions as coming from Patagonia and the possibility that some of them could have been known as Iemisch (Yem'chen)but without any really good evidence. I would say that would be at least consistent

Text quoting from the book Patagonian Monsters

[NB: Upon checking, The Rhone Sea Serpent and others like it seen at the Straits of Magellan more closely match the reported dimensions of Megalotaria rather than the larger, commoner Longnecks]