The head of the model is based on an old reconstruction for "Broontosaurus" and does not resemble the head in the Mansi photograph closely
Below is a review of Sea Serpent and Plesiosaur "Muppet faces" and at bottom, an Illustration for the top of Champ's head surfacing.
Scott Mardis also tells me there id fairly good evidence from reports that alligator gar and Atlantic sturgeon are both seen at Lake Champlain, the former as recently as 2000. He adds there is a possibility for conger eels to go inland in this area (in which case they could account for some sightings at Lake Memphremagog) and I have good evidence myself that some "water lizard" reports at Lake Champlain could be giant salamanders (Giant hellbenders) And I am wondering if perhaps the sounds of echolocation recorded underwater might even be produced by ordinary grey seals: some seals in Antarctica are known to use echolocation while fishing.
Interesting stuff here! The "muppet-face" comparison was my doing by the way, but I had the Isle of Mann SS instead of the Champ illustration at the lower right.
ReplyDeleteWell no, actually the base was done by Scott Mardis and run on this blog already before: And you already knew that I did not count the Isle of Man creature as the same thing (For one reason, it does not even have a long neck) The inclusion of the Champ image is WHY it is pertinent here and your input was appreciated but it was only secondary in this case.
DeleteAlso, I'm not too sure why you're so against the idea of a longneck with a large head. The object from Gille's footage seems to have a large head and so does the object in Gina Jones' photograph which bears a resemblance to the Mansi photograph. Not all plesiosaurs had tiny heads, as well!
ReplyDeleteThere was a former President of the United States who was famous for saying "Read my lips": the reason why is that it comes out that way in statistical averages and consistently. When you are dealing with statistical averages individual cases are weighted in that witness estimations that are closest to the average are considered more reliable, witness' estimations that are too far from the average are unreliable. Therre is some leeway in that smaller younger individuals will have proportionately larger heads and I believe the creature in Mansi's photo is a young individual. But individual cases as such do not count for much and citing them results in what Darren Naish calls "Cherrypicking" (whereas when you are going by the statistics you are assorting the reported traits impartially and without bias) The statistical averages I came up with are virtually identical to the ones that Oudemans came up with, counting the tail as much shorter: the typical 30 to 40 foot adults have heads that are 18 inches to two feet long and that is very consistent. The Dungeness spit account with a head twenty inches long is absolutely typical. It is not as if I set out to find certain reports that said the heads were proportionately small, it came out in the statistical analysis and it is consistent with the results of other researchers as well (such as Tim Dinsdale) Nor can we switch around to more candidate Plesiosaurs to make special allowances for reports of creatures that have larger heads simply because there is the excuse that some Plesiosaurs had bigger heads than others. Creatures that have statistically large heads, shorter neckes and thicker necks must be considered to be a distinct population statistically. One oif these statistical populations looks very close to an elephant seal for example. Ivan Sanderson might include such reports as Longnecks but I don't because I consider the proportions to be too different; and Bernard Heuvelmans might consider the Southern Hemisphere series of such reports to be "Merhorses" because he makes the distinction from the Longnecks in such cases; but as for me it is still the same divergent population of reports that bear the trademarks of elephant seals. Similarly there is another consistent population of reports all over the Northern hemisphere that bear the trademark traits of a swimming moose. These also cannot be considered to be Longnecks and one of the key determining factors in that category is the size and the shape of the head.
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