Hagen Carcass Is a Dorudon?

While discussing the matter of the Hagen carcass with Jay Cooney, the possibility of an Archaeocete identity came up. I had several reservations about archaeocetes per se but I suggested that the creature could have been something like a Dorudon and have both the rear flippers and a whale-tail simultaneously. At this time I am thinking it could be the strongest candidate we have. Jay Cooney also feels it is something along those lines "Most likely something with the features of no dorsal fin, rear flippers[as well as the front flippers], and a whale-tail."

.

Dorudon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorudon

 

http://bizarrezoology.blogspot.com/2013/08/hagan-carcass-comparison-images-part_5.html
http://bizarrezoology.blogspot.com/2013/08/hagan-carcass-comparisons-part-2gambo.html
http://bizarrezoology.blogspot.com/2013/08/hagan-carcass-comparison-images-part.html

 

Above, top to bottom: top, Thomas Finlay's painting of the Hagen carcass,

two views of Gambo and a drawing of the carcass by the witness.

 

Above, Bruce Champagne's SeaSerpent category 2b,

Gambo in two views once again and the Hagen carcass once again.

 

http://www.deviantart.com/art/Ambon-serpent-165351556
Below is Tim Morris' (Pristichampsus') reconstruction for the Ambon SS from Deviant Art, and below that his reconstruction for Bruce Champagne's "Eel-like whale" Sea Serpent type 2b. Jay Cooney guesses that both of them could be related to Both Gambo and the Hagen carcass, and the back fin on the upper reconstruction is not shown on the witness' sketch for the Ambon SS.

More Comparisons of Longnecked SeaSerpent Models

 

The standard Heuvelmans model Longneck is above. However, on the internet you will find such alternatives as the one directly below, which seems to have been influenced by some conceptions representing the Loch Ness Monster as "Nessiteras Rhombopteryx"

 

 

http://newpagebooks.blogspot.com/2013/07/creature-of-month-sinuous-sea-serpent.html

  " Here are the categories of Sea-Serpents proposed by Heuvelmans, incorporating some more recent analyses by Loren Coleman, Patrick Huyghe, and Bruce Champagne. My illustrations are based on those of Heuvelmans:

"1.        Long-Necked or Megalotaria longicollis (“giant sea lion with a long neck”)—A 15- to 65-foot-long, plesiosaur-like creature with a long neck, several humps, and the ability to move in vertical undulations. The head has a distinctive horse-like or “cameloid” appearance, and hair and whiskers have been reported. Believed to be a long-necked, short-tailed sea lion. Seen worldwide, with 82 reported sightings." 

The head on this representation is way too small, but enlarging the head results in a decent depiction for the Hoy Island/Mackintosh Bell 1918 Sea serpent category and this is the one I was willing to allow to retain the name of Megalotaria because the basic concept and appearance for Heuvelmans' category is based on this type. 15 feet would be the normal adult size for the creature and not a minimum: a Scientific description exists for a 7 foot long pup and the biggest adult male should not be more than three times the length of the pup (Which Heuvelmans states himself in connection to the Hoy SS sighting. that would be just over 20 feet or a little under 7 meters)

Once again the given proportions for the 1918 Hoy SS are that the neck is about half the length of the body, about as long as the body is thick, and about a quarter as thick as it is long (Presumably near the base).

 

The reconstruction can be made to approximate a more typical Longneck if we move the illustrated portion ahead and allow a length of the neck is in the water and not showing because it is submerged. Several models for the Loch Ness Monster assume a shorter neck and estimates range from 1/4 of the whole length down to 1/6 or less: and Oudemans made the head and neck out as 1/5 of the length. these shorter estimates would all stem from observations of only part of the neck showing.

Dragging out the rear flipper as representing sightings that allege a tail does yield a real tail of appreciable size. Approximately 1/10 of Longneck reports at Loch Ness and at sea specify the tail

Below are Tim Morris' representations of the Longnecks as categorized by Heuvelmans and Bruce Champagne. The latter system contains two Long-necked subtypes, and both of them have tails.

 

 

http://cameronmccormick.blogspot.com/2008/01/unknown-sea-serpent-classification.html

Lord Geekington summarises the two Long-necked subtypes out of the Champagne system as follows:

Type 1: "Long-necked"

These are reports that, of course, are of long necked animals. Confusingly, other types have this characteristic (3, 4B), but presumably other characters took precedence. This type is somewhat comparable to the long-necked/merhorse/super-otter classification of Heuvelmans and the "waterhorse" category of Coleman and Huyghe. Unlike previous authors, it has been divided into two sub-types.


Type 1A:

This "long necked" is primarily distinguished by a head of the same or slightly smaller diameter than the neck. Type 1As are reported worldwide, but appear most in boreal climate zones. They aren't even limited to salt water and have apparently been sighted several kilometers inland in fresh water, possibly to breed. Champagne also suggests that this type is a pinniped and a relatively large one at 2.5-12 (9 avg) meters in reported length [=8.5 (!) to 40 feet long, 30 feet average. I am comfortable with the 30-40 foot usual adult size range.-DD]. Given peoples' tendency to exaggerate, I'd suggest that this type could fall within the mass range of pinnipeds [calculating the mass by given volume, it essentially is just about the same mass as an elephant seal-DD]. The proposition of a long necked and tailed pinniped raises a lot of questions. Pinniped necks actually aren't longer than a dog's ('cept Acrophoca see Darren of course [ERROR!Acrophoca's neck is NOT longer than a sea lion's]) and tend to be immensely thick to boot. Pinnipeds have very short tails, and [Heuvelmans, Costello and] the Coleman/Huyghe book suggested that reports of a long tail are due to the rear limbs. The superficial plesiosaur or elasmosaur-like body coupled with a pinniped-style flexible neck makes this type quite unique and would presumably indicate an unknown niche. The idea of a pinniped being fully adapted to a marine life and taking on a new form doesn't seem too outlandish, and at least this type resembles common sightings. The lack of resemblance to anything in the fossil record is still a major problem of course.[The obvious resemblance to Plesiosaurs suggests a different interpretation to Karl Shuker and to most observers, ie, that it actually IS a Plesiosaur. The supposed problem with the neck flexibility is more of a problem with Elasmosaurs in particular rather than all Plesiosaurs in general-DD]

Type 1B:

This "type" is only known from 5 sightings in the North Atlantic and is distinguished by a head larger in diameter than the neck. It is supposedly much larger (17 meters+/ over 55 feet, or the "Average length of 60 feet" given by Heuvelmans-DD]) than the 1A and displays more "primitive" characteristics and different behaviors (frequently associates with cetaceans, etc). Oh, these illustrations are ones that I did a while back, so you'll see I chose to portray it as a more robust "1A" type animal as opposed to another lineage of long-necked creature. Limbs were never observed and only inferred to exist by presumed relations. The proposed anatomy of this type is even stranger than the 1A, and I don't know what to think of a massive head on a long neck. Judging by the lack of sightings or apparently much detail, I'm suggesting that future analyses will probably just absorb these sightings into the "1A" or maybe "type 3" classification. Ah, to lump or to split, the eternal question. [I reviewed the cases of Longnecks associated with Cetaceans in an earlier blog, I saw no difference in head size from the common Longnecks and no differences from the more common Longneck sightings, period.-DD]

Below once again is the very useful comparison chart made by Tim Morris which contains the images excerpted above:

 

In a different matter,

While discussing the Marine Saurian of Heuvelmans with Jay Cooney, I mentioned that some of the "Many Humped" creatures could have been in that category since the "humps" were being produced by the wake and not a permanent feature of the anatomy. I then suggested that some of the Massachussets bay sea serpents (some of them were "Alligator-headed*) and Scandinavian "Super-otters" could have been the larger kind of Marine Sauran, the Whale-Eater, and that some reports with very large humps in a row could be such creatures stalking small pods of large whales. This would be why the Coleman/Huyghe Classic Sea Serpent resembles a "Marine Saurian" in design.

 

"Classic Sea Serpent: A quadrupedal, elongated animal with the appearance of many humps when swimming. Essentially a composite of the many humped, super otter, and super eels types."

 

In my statistical analysis of Sea Serpent reports (edition sent in to the SITU in 1980), I did make mention of the fact that suspected reports of zueglodonts. Mosasaurs and Giant eels tended to fall together statistically and were different to sort out from internal criteria.

 

(* footnote: Heuvelmans refers to a series of  "Alligator headed" Sea Serpent reports from the area of Nantucket in the 1960s as being "Typical": he has qualms about one of the reports stating it had a long neck and he assume that somehow a reported neck 2'6" long became reported as 26 feet long . This is the Noreen sighting. I had not noticed before but a head and neck length of 25 feet for the whale-eater Marine saurian is absolutely typical!  -In the Wake of the Sea Serpents, page 527)

Bruce Champagne's Sailfin

http://pristichampsus.deviantart.com/art/4B-Sailfin-as-fish-153072829

The fantastic creature above was posted to his Deviant Art account by "Pristichampsus" (Tim Morris) as illustrating one of Bruce Champagne's Sea Serpent types. In order to deal with this better, we shall need to go back to the original statement Bruce had made. The summary of the type and the reconstruction illustrating the type are reproduced below:

4B Sailfin: An elongated animal of possible mammalian or reptilian identity reported from 12 to 85 feet long. It has a long neck with a turtle-like head and a long continuous dorsal fin. Cosmopolitan.

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2010/05/dale-drinnon-possible-identifications.html

My comments were as follows:

 "4B is obviously the same as the Valhalla Sea-Serpent. I do not know why BC gives it such a wide size range nor Geographic range, although I was aware of other reports of the type (Heuvelmans calls one a "Marine Dimetrodon"). I actually do not know what it is, but with that head and neck it is presumably related to the Plesiosaurs."

Now as to what Tim Morris had said:

4B Sailfin as fish
by ~Pristichampsus

Digital Art / Drawings / Animals

©2010-2013 ~Pristichampsus

This is another interesting Bruce Champagne Sea-serpent. Said to undulate it's dorsal fin in order to locomote, it seemed most logical to reconstruct this animal as an aberrant fish, as opposed to Champagne's "mammal-like-reptile" identity.[DD-Emphasis added]

Load All Images

~thomastapir Feb 6, 2010

NICE. I can totally see this as a derived oarfish or even viperfish![DD-Emphasis added]

Reply

~Pristichampsus Feb 6, 2010  Professional General Artist

Yeah, definately a derived fishy of some sort.

This was also followed by:

 

http://pristichampsus.deviantart.com/art/4b-Sailfin-alternate-153201191

 

4b Sailfin alternate

by ~Pristichampsus

Digital Art / Drawings / Animals

©2010-2013 ~Pristichampsus

This is an air-breathing and corrected version of the sailfin. Apparently it makes audible exhalations, so that makes an alternative to a fish necessary. Though I guess it could have been the sound of distant surf.

 

DD COMMENT: The audible breath is a distinctive reference to the  Soay Beast which is clearly not a sailfinned anything. I would call that an error in the classification.

Going back to the oarfish idea there is probably more to it than any of us realized before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oarfish
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8501000/8501251.stm

Oarfish are large, greatly elongated, pelagic Lampriform fishes comprising the small family Regalecidae.^[1] Found in all temperate to tropical oceans yet rarely seen, the oarfish family contains four species in two genera. One of these, the king of herrings (Regalecus glesne), is the longest bony fish alive, at up to 17 metres (56 ft) in length [One of the sources cited says "over sixty feet"].^[2][3]


The Oarfish have three aspects that are important here. Firstly, the back fin of the sailfin from the neck on back is much the same as the oarfish. Secondly, the geographic range is the same as the oarfish's range  and thirdly, the alleged size range is close to the alleged size range for the oarfish. In the case of Tim Morris' depiction, it struck me right off that the head of the creature even has an indication for the "Oars" of the oarfish in the "Barbels" it has, and swimming by means of wiggling the back fin is also a trait of the oarfishes. So in general I think we have a category that includes some non-standard Longneck sightings (including probably both the Valhalla and Soay SS sightings) intermixed with some mistaken reports of probably just plain oarfishes.

In other words, Longnecks plus oarfishes equals the Sailfin sightings of this Bruce Champagne Sea Serpent category:

 

Seen from some angles, the wiggling of the backfin in an oarfish can make it seem as if the forward section of the back is different, without a fin, and it looks like the "neck" part of the Sailfin SS  reconstruction. It is important to note that this video says that confirmed lengths of the oarfish go up to 25 feet but that the unconfirmed estimates go up to fifty feet or more, which is consistent with the statement made in the Wikipedia.[Markus Buhler also wishes for me to draw attention to this fact]

 

 

Some Other 'Pristichampsus' Sea-Serpent Art on DeviantArt

Humpback Whale Leaping and "Humpback and Gorramolooch, the Truth and the Legend"







Conakry Monster by Pristichampsus (decayed Humpback Whale)




CFZ REPOST: Tuesday, December 21, 2010
DALE DRINNON: IRISH SEA SERPENT ADDENDUM
The following news item is found on various sites on the internet, mostly deriving from the site Cryptomundo. It is a newspaper clipping originally submitted by Jerome Clark.

Kingston Daily Freeman
Kingston, New York

June 17, 1922

IRELAND HAS FOUND ITS OWN SEA SERPENT

It Has an Irish Name and Fishermen Insist That Sight of It Is Bad Luck.

This being the time for the annual crop of sea-serpents the public here is being regaled with a new one of Irish nationality.

Its Irish name is “Gorramooloch.” It cannot only swim and lash its tail in orthodox sea-serpent manner, but reports from the west coast of Ireland, where it is alleged to have been seen frequently, credit it with the power of flight.

According to inhabitants of the wilder parts of the coast of Connemara, Mayo and Donegal, the “Gorramooloch” frequently turns up for exhibition stunts, principally at night. It is described as being shaped like a porpoise, 100 feet long, and rushing through the water with the speed of an express train. Occasionally it would leap out of and forward over the water a distance to its own length. When it fell back into the sea again the splash was said to sound like the crack of a three-inch gun.

The fact that these creatures are not seen more often is because, it is explained, they appear principally at night. It is then that they go a-hunting after the gannet, a sort of seagull. When they see one flying near the surface of the ocean, they leap out of the water 40 or 50 feet and gliding, by the aid of their large wing-like fins, guided by their vertically set tail, bring down the bird.

Fishermen, curiously enough, consider the appearance of the “Gorramooloch” to be a sign of bad luck, though it has not yet been reported to be cannibalistic. But there is another brand of sea serpent which they fear more as a sign of ill omen. This one is yclept the “Bo-dree-more.” It is said to be a large whale-like animal, so large and powerful that it chases whales for sport. According to local superstition, the sight of a “Bo-dree-more” means certain ill luck for the men and the craft who spot it.

The identity of the Goramooloch is almost transparently obvious because it is a fairly good description of a humpback whale leaping fully out of the water, as they sometimes do. The size is only somewhat exaggerated since the humpback whale only grows to about 60 feet long; but still a guess of a hundred feet is less that double the actual length and double the actual length in a report of an "Unknown animal" is almost standard. The statement about their leaping after gannets would basically be only a bad guess as to what is going on: similarly the allegation of a vertically-set tail (which is not in the original reports but in the "Explanation" part) would only be another bad guess.



As to the "Bodreemore" (Alternate spelling) I would like to know more because this sounds exactly like the Untersee Crocodile as reported by the German U-boat captains in World War 1.



Posted by Jon Downes at 4:15 AM 2 comments:
drshoop said...
The "Bodreemore" description sounds a lot like an Orca or Killer Whale as it were.
[More along the lines of the extinct "Leviathan" predatory Sperm Whale-DD]

5:22 PM
Dale Drinnon said...
Markus Hemmler did write to me subsequently that he had found another newspaper article about the Gorramooloch, worded slightly differently.

I told him no thanks, I had been there, done that, but now I was really more interested in the "Bodreemore"-
That latter name might possibly be a misspelling for the Gaelic meaning "The great Sea Dragon", but I cannot be sure of that.

2:49 AM


An assortment of large Sea-serpents as illustrated by "Pristichampsus (Tim Morris) on Deviant Art, all as variations of sightings in the Whale-Eater (Dr. Shuker's Leviathan) series of reports.
Dale considers that all these reconstructions are different attempts to show the same sort of creature as seen bu different witnesses.


Bo-Dree-More or Irish Whale-Eater;





Grangense SS seen near mouth of Amazon River



Biblical Leviathan:






Monongahela Monster










Eagle Schooner Monster seen off Southern US along with a young one.








These Last two are different and I consider them to represent a contrasting type to the Heuvelmans' Marine Saurians represented in the series above:
Type 6-Saurian (Marine Saurian) category by Bruce Champagne,more like another edition of the following:






"Duckbilled Sea Crocodile" both by Pristichampsus, The description of this creature being that it is like the IndoPacific crocodile but larger, more at home at sea, with horned ear scutes and a wider, blunter head like an alligator, called "Duckbilled" in some sources. This is identical to one of Dale Drinnon's categories for SOME "Marine Saurian" reports, plus Mark Hall's category of "'Horrors'From the Mesozoic" in North America (article title in PURSUIT)

More Comments on Heuvelmans' Sea-serpents

The Major Types of Bernard Heuvelmans' Sea-Serpents, ca 1969

Diagram showing Sperm whale and its skeleton. Please note the row of small humps on top of the tail section: Heuvelmans said that the humps on the back of his sea-serpent were similar to these and much the same function, but were more prominent to the witnesses.




The shape of the Sperm whale's head is due to its including a large tank holding an oily substance, the spermaceti. This organ evidently functions as a hydrostatic organ. maintaining the animal's position in the water while it swims. Heuvelmans assumes that the humps on the back of the Many-humped Sea-serpent are hydrostatic organs and in this case he is following Ivan Sanderson's suggestion.



Heuvelmans' Many-Humped Sea-Serpent
by Pristichampsus (Tim Morris)

This incorporates several sets of mistaken observations. The unknown animal involved turns out to be the same as the Long-necked Sea-serpent or Oudemans' "Megophias" but the observations of the humps are a series of mistaken observations of waves in the wake. Different kinds of animals make the appropriate kind of wake, but including both Longnecks and Killer whales, other whales, boats, sharks, large fishes and other kinds of Sea-serpents.See my earlier CFZ blog:
http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2009/11/dale-drinnon-distant-humps.html

Forepart of Manyhumped SS, Backfin and Pectoral fins, derived from Orca (Killer whale) in a position unfamiliar to the witnesses. This also bolstered the opinion that the "Correct" colouration for the type was black on the back, white on the belly-like an Orca.



Heuvelmans' LongNecked SS
By Pristichampsus

This type also features a shorter line of humps on the back which Heuvelmans says are of variable contour: one big central hump on the back, or several medium sized ones (which he says that the big central hump causes the appearance of two or three large humps together) or else the humps are whipped by turbulance waves in the water to as many as six or seven smaller humps in a line. His book In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents includes a plate showin a swimming seal to make the point about the turbulence waves. This follows after earlier suggestions that the humps might be inflatable airsacs, which is a theory Dinsdale championed at first and then Sanderson took up thereafter. Heuvelmans continued the idea the humps might be airsacs in the Many-humped kind and I used to go along with the idea in the case of the Longnecks. Discussions with members at the yahoo group Frontiers of Zoology did bring home the extreme precariousness of the arrangement, when an accidental puncture would be disastrous and too great of water pressure on the whole could blow out the whole system and potentially expose a large section of the back to the mercy of the outside world.

So a safer model might be like the sperm whale's spermaceti tank removed to the center of the back as a hydrostatic organ in lieu of a back fin. Anatomically it would be composed of mostly the top layer and the bottom layer of tougher connective tissue and in between, a chamber full of an oily or waxy secretion. This would be equivalent to what Heuvelmans was saying when he was calling the hump area a sack of oily fat, which would come down to basically that same structure, anatomically speaking, and it would act the same way to become variable-contour in the water.

However for the most part and for the very LONG hump-trains, we would still be talking in terms of standing wave effects caused by the way the wake works.

Heuvelmans also said that the Longneck occasionally showed "Horns" that were presumably erectile nostrils forming snorkles. I would have to say that the feature occurs so infrequently, and is also known to show up consistently i one category of mistakes, that this feature is unconfirmed. It is best not to make too big a deal over them. Given that the "Mane" is sometimes said to be spiny, the "Horns" might be nothing more complicated than part of a young male's first mane starting to come in (They are definitely spoken of as part of the mane in the Corinthian SS's description)












Parsons 1751 Long-Necked Seal (7 foot long Juvenile=adult male no more than 20 feet long)

There are on the other hand still good reason to think there are such things as Long-necked seals. In fact they had a scientific description long ago but were mostly forgotten since then.

The Kivik Stone Evidently Illustrating Long-Necked Seals.
The Long-necked seals turn out to be not so very large and still in the size range of the "Known" seals since reports of them are universally between ten and twenty feet long.


Recent photos allegedly showing a Longnecked Sea-Serpent swimming off of Devon, UK:

Although the photos are not clear, the great distance between the head and the (supposedly turtlelike) body of this sea Monster do cause me to think this might be a fairly young Longnecked sea-serpent. This would be about right for the usual attitude in the water, the creature must be putting out some sort of an effort to seem to ride higher in the water, probably by using its paddles in a downstroke. If I understand these photos correctly, the head of the crature at top is facing right and at bottom it is facing left.




Closely-Packed Pilot Whales, Origin of SOME "Manyfinned" SS cases. At times the head of one is seen and identified as looking exactly like a Pilot whale's head.

Many-Finned Orcas, Puget Sound pod






I mentioned before that it was convenient for me to speak of Bruce Champagne's and Bernard Heuvelmans' Marine Saurians as different creatures: For me, Heuvelmans was describing a more definite Mosasaur with scales arranged in rings around the body, and the emphasis on the WWI UBoat Captains' reports. On the other hand, Champagne emphasizes a different suite of features including a potted coloration, shortened head and more obvious feet with webbed separate digits, and he mentions a Mediterranean population. In this case, that means the Medcroc to me. The Medcroc is often written off as errant examples of the Nile Crocodile, but reports say that it is broader and fatter, with a broader snout ("Duckbilled"), and they say that it can grow to enormous sizes over 50 feet long for a really big one. (One of them was definitely the Tarrasque, and estimates on the Tarrasque's size can range from 50 to 75 feet long)


Below is a representational Sea Dragon from a Roman coin: its head is elongated and looks like a crocodile's head, and the body shows four short widely-spaced legs, and so this might be a representation of a Medcroc. medcroc "Dragons" were definitely known to come ashore in Greece and Turkey in Classical days, and some are still turning up in Italy up to the present.



The colour illustration is the Aiya Napa seamonster seen around Cyprus as interpreted by Pristichampsus. The creature is called "The Friendly Monster" locally because it is not known to have ever attacked anubody. Some pretty fantastic descriptions are ascribed to it, and here Tim Morris depicts it as a sort of Mosasaur. From some of the more recent descriptions it is more definitely a crocodile, and it might be another surviving population of the Medcroc.

Early French depiction of Tarrasque on a church pillar, from Wikipedia, Image reversed. Note similarity of shape of the head (right) to the head of an alligator. The scales on the back are squared here, but also said to be interspersed with pointed ones.

Some More From the Mailbag III

"Know Your Sea-Serpents" a chart illustrating the types of Bernard Heuvelmans and Bruce Champagne, By "Pristichampsus" again.



Incidentally, two pror blog entries before this one deal with the other statistical analyses of other sea-serpent categories. This blog examines Bruce Chamagne's alternative classification scheme for Sea-Serpents and including some of my identifications of some of those categories as "Known" animals (Particularly some kinds of whales)
http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2011/05/repost-dale-drinnon-possible.html




While this older blog posting evaluates the remaining Heuvelmans "Sea-serpent" categories:
http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2011/05/repost-dale-drinnon-modifications-to.html



This chart leaves off Heuvelmans' Marine Saurian while I find it useful to speak of a Crocodylian Marine Sauruian more closely conforming to Bruce Champagne's description and a lager Mosasaurian Marine Saurian (Dr. Shuker's Leviathan) following Heuvelmans. The chart also leaves off Gambo. This more complete chart includes a "Seamonkey" (Digited) category which is probably not justified by the reports it is meantr to cover, and while Heuvelmans speaks of at least two forms of Super-Eels (see the second link above for my reconstructions), the more complete of Champagne's categories also includes a more elongated "Serpentine" category-which in effect once againyields a short and stocky eel and a much larger, more elongated one (2C and 9). Bruce Chamapgne's categories which I identify as whales are in a neat cluster here, Eel-like 2A and 2B, Sailfinned 4A and Carapaced 5, the last one I count as a humpback whale turned turtle since the 15 foot foreflippers are diagnostic. Many-Humped and Multi-humped are both mistakes based on observations of standing waves in the wake, as is the Super-Otter: and the Many-finned and Multi-Finned are mistakes based on small schools of cetaceans being taken to be the same animal. Heuvelmans' Merhorse also has a tail although large seals (elephant seals) are routinely counted in with the other reports and give a false impression of a seallike body and fins, and a shorter neck, to the type.





Best Wishes, Dale D.

Some More From The Mailbag I

Tyler Stone sent me a drawing he had made of a Many-Finned Sea-Serpent and I wrote back that I liked his drawing but there was just no way you could make any one reconstruction to adequately illustrate the type. After which he sent this reply which I thought was worth passing on:


Thank you, I'm glad you liked it.

I do understand that the problem with drawing a many-finned is that there is no way of making an accurate composite without drawing different kinds of animals to fit the reports. I think a good example would be in Tim Morris's art for this type:











Heuvelmans's Many-Finned (left) and Champagne's Many-Finned (right) by Tim Morris

The basic types described are supposed to be the same basic creature, but they look completely different from each other. So there is no accurate composite. My drawing was based off of the Coleman and Huyghe version. So the illustration I used was most likely inaccurate for the reports already, at least compared to other versions.

I have other cryptid drawings I can send if you wish. I hope you enjoyed my many-finned sketch. Personally, no matter how redoubtable the type is, I think there will always be something charismatic about the Many-Finned.

Yours truly,
-Tyler Stone

The "Charismatic" part is probably due to the attempt to make this creature a union of opposites: a sort of walrus-faced waterbug or a whale crossed with a centepede. Or as in the Ogopogo song "His father was an earwig and his mother was a whale" And then beyond that you have to contend to fantasies meant to depict something described with such an enormous variance of features that it can have four to twelve fins on a side, be three feet broad and sixty feet long with a row of three-foot fins, or fifteen feet broad and sixty feet long with side fins probably ten to twelve feet long as well. FEW artists have tried to draw the extremes, which of course look nothing like the usual reconstructions seen in print and nothing like each other. And I am afraid that there is a great deal of variance in the degree of "Charisma" between a long noodle 20X as long as it is wide, with fins of about equal width on either side, or a broad wedge 4X as long as its greatest width with two rows so side fins making the width even more exaggerated. IMHO, the mass appeal ascribed to the creature in this case is due to a careful selection of what to show and what not to show.
There is a similarly exact selection process in which images meant to depict "Dragons" are shown nowadays. Any more the "Dragons" have been certified as Dungeons & Dragons fantasy versions with four legs and wings, armour and horns, of an enormous size and breathing fire. Traditional dragons are a great deal more varied than this and most of their depictions in historical documents are not nearly so "Charismatic"

Another message I recieved this week concerned a continuance of the Giant Beaver attributed to Lake Okanagon, the Ogopogo lake. My correspondant in this matter suggested that the 1989 Chaplin photo of "Ogopogo-and explained away as a beaver smacking its tail on the water-would instead be a Castoriodes because it seems much larger than an ordinary beaver and more especially because the tail seems to be the wrong shape. So if this is true we have our first identifiable photo of a surviving Giant Beaver.




Best Wishes, Dale D.