Indian Rock, Champ, And The American Bunyip

 

Scott Mardis sent me some more pdfs about the "Horned Serpent" and the Lake Champlain area. Among the more interesting items was a petroglyph rock from Southern Vermont called Indian Rock. The creature shown on it was very interesting but not well shown on the rock itself: I have some other versions here and my composite redrawing of the creature is above. Although it is called a "Great Horned Serpent" the conventionalization is different enough that it makes me think it is more like an American Bunyip. The Abnaki and surrounding peoples called it Tatoskok and said it was a snake as big as a tree with a head like a horse's and two hotns on it. The settlers later called it a "Hippogryph" but evidently this was a mistake for "Hippocampus" (and as such it was represented on powder horns also supplied by Scott Mardis) Most of the images in this blog posting are from "Horned Panthers and Erie Associates" by William Fox (2004) but the paper describes several different things and runs them all together. I am doing this as a sort of extraction of what seems to me to be a distinctly different local type.

 

The Indian Rock petroglyph is at Battleboro, Vermont and is shown below. One commentator thought the long horizontal line at top right represented a long neck turned back but I think this is more likely a bow wave. Bow waves are definitely represented on other similar petroglyphs.

This creature has some very specific Plesiosaur-like characteristics such as the long neck with a small head at the end of it, and a big body with four flippers and a short tail on the other end. The combination of the big ovoid body and four schematic limbs is what reminded me of Australian "Bunyips" in their own rock art.

 

Above: The long neck can be seen in "Periscope" position.

Below: also associated with large pointed or peaked humps on the back.

Three humps are usual.

This particular brand of Plesiosaur-like "Horned Serpents seem to be more of in the East and in New England proper, and along the St Lawrence seaway BELOW Niagra falls (gold stars on map, the Micmac version indicated by the arrow)

The more usual "Water panthers" or Mishipiziheus are more characteristic of the upper Great Lakes and inland generally. In their case there are catlike eyes and whiskers, and the "Horns" are definitely pointed ears at times.

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Some More Plesiosaur Lake Monster Info From Scott Mardis

Scott Mardis compares Lake Champlain and Loch Ness photographs with Plesiosaur skeletons above, and a view of a photograph of the head with the skull of a Plesiosaur at the British Museum.

 

Scott Mardis included this reconstruction of a type of Plesiosaur with a "back fin"-this would not ordinarily show up in fossils and a lower fleshy structure like this could have been more of a hump structure and serve the same purpose. Scott Mardis also suggested to me that there could be a natural tendency to develop two medial back humps above the front and rear limb girdles: the same possibility had occurred to me independently several years earlier, and others had also independently remarked upon it. The basic structures would be made up of skin over connective tissue, but you could also include a fatty layer in that, some kinds of sea creatures store fat in or near the fins.

 

 

Scott Mardis' overlay of a Champ sighting over a Plesiosaur skeleton and showing the known range of motion in the neck in that genus. I do not think the difference in the flexibility as stated by the witness was that severely different, and the main new feature to be present and not shown are the humps on the back. I prefer Heuvelman's description of the hump in Longnecks: "One big medial hump looking like two otr three smaller humps together", with underlying layers of fat underneath it, and the humps can change shape owing to turbulence waves in the wayter and from the action of muscular layers in it (Oudemans even suggested this last statement)

 

Below is a summary of sightings from Loch Morar, and the sightings are typically much like the composite profile that we get from the Longnecked reports at Loch Ness

 (there is also a smaller residual of smaller shortnecked creatures in both locations)

 

 

 

Tim Dinsdale with his model he made illustrating his analysis of the "Monster" reports at Loch Ness. He had two different basic models, one with the two humps illustrated in his drawing in the book, and the three-humped version he shows in this model. He also said that it really did not matter since he thought the humps could change shape. Basically we are all saying the same thing on that point. Dinsdale thought the humps were showing subcutaneous air sacs but after some deliberation I opted for Heuvelmans' explanation as being safer.

 

Tim Dinsdale remarked that the body configuration of the creature in this sighting (seen partly on shore) was close to his composite model but made independently before his model was publicized. The drawing also "Predicted" the rhomboid fins that were not documented as belonging to the Loch Ness Monster until much later on.

 

Hawkesbury River Monster from Australia, frequently compared to Dinsdale's version of Nessie and in fact often called just "Nessie. The worldwide overall similarity of the reported creatures is actually quite close and the same features and proportions keep showing up.

Plesiosaurs and Gars

As Scott Mardis  mentioned, Canadian Post-Cretaceous freshwater plesiosaur fossils have been found in the same deposits as those of gars and bowfins (He has the pdf on file)

Scott posted this picture as "Meanwhile in Lake Champlain" saying that it could just as easily represent conditions in Lake Champlain now. The illustration was intended to show a Mesozoic Plesiosaur.

My comment was "Those garfish look eminently swallowable" and on his separate posting about the fossil association "I would take that as a strong indicator for a predator-prey relationship"

Lake Champlain Rhombopteryx

 

 

I was sent this by Jay Cooney some time back but I decided to wait until he had a go at publishing it himself. It seems to represent a Plesiosaur-shaped creature in this footage taken at Lake Champlain and it seems to have the same sort of a flipper as is ascribed to the Loch Ness Monster.  The original footage is known as the Bodette video. Scott Mardis has also remarked upon this. Below is an animated gif which seems to show the creature opening and shutting its mouth
http://makeagif.com/bkySa_#MQYupTGpevK1Csze.01

Nessie, Champ, Caddy and Waterfowl

Posted earlier at The Zombie Plesiosaur Society on Facebook:

Dale Drinnon:


Loch Ness Monster. Longnecks are stated to take waterfowl at the surface in many locations and this could pad out the food supply that we need to consider as support for the theoretical number limit for the monster population in such areas





Gina Jones:
 Yes it is stated in both Champ and Nessie for sure






Dale Drinnon
And for Caddy at sea





William Robert Hancock
Quite possible. BTW......bad to the bone painting!!!!!!







Scott Mardis
http://www.njan.org/files/Champ%20Eats%20Seagull%20July%202004.pdf



Scott Mardis Plesiosaurs eating birds- the smoking gun.
http://saurian.blogspot.com/2012/11/svp-2012-some-tasty-morsels.html

Saurian: SVP 2012 - Some Tasty Morsels saurian.blogspot.com "Richardoestesia is an enigmatic theropod taxon of uncertain phylogenetic affini...





Dale Drinnon
Yes we already had fossils of Plesiosaur stomach contents that included pterosaur remains among other things



Scott Mardis
I have that paper somewhere.

For Champ:

Posted by Jay BizarreZoo C For Caddy, at Sea: Posted by Jay BizarreZoo C

Scott Mardis Lake Champlain Sighting

Details of Scott Mardis' sighting of an unknown presumed animal on Lake Champlain, letter shared with Dick Raynor:

I was approximately where the red dot on the map is shown. Where you see the green dot is the general direction of my sighting.

Battery park sits elevated on a bluff with lowlands spreading out by the waterfront. I was sitting on a bench.

 

As best as I could, using this photo, I tried to illustrate the general direction of my sighting angle looking out toward the water (below, green dot).

 

Can't remember the exact model of the binoculars I was using but they were Nikons very much like these.

 

 
Here is what I saw through binoculars:

The whole encounter was over in like 40 seconds. Like Dinsdale, I saw a boat go by later in the same general area, approximately the same length as my "object". Later on I found a boat like the one I saw and it was about 15 feet long, so I figured 15 feet was about the length of my whats-it.

[The object off to the one side in the second photo is thought to have been a flipper owing to the way it attaches to the body with more of the body sticking out below it-DD]

[15 feet is in general the statistical standard size for the body (torso) in reports of such creatures worldwide, although many reports round that up to 20 feet and sightings at sea tend to be estimated as larger. This also matches the Mokele-mBembe because 15 feet is also about the length of your standard hippo and the Mokele-mBembe is also said to have a body of that length.-DD]

Champ Update from Scott Mardis

Account of 1974 sighting of Champ [...]
Retold- June 21, 2000

 Hi Dennis,

 An old timer told me this account many years ago and I know the man wasn't lying. He asked that I never repeat it to anyone, using his name. He's dead now, so I don't think he'd mind. Anyway, he said that many years ago (I think in the early 1970s) he and his granddaughter were fishing from shore near the "cow banks," which is on South Hero.
It was very early morning, in July I believe. He said suddenly they heard loud "breathing sounds." When they looked down the shore they saw a huge animal pull itself up onto the shore. With binoculars he observed it, from about 150 yards away. I am enclosing a sketch I have done from memory, of the sketch he drew for me, of what it looked like and it's approximate size. He did say it was VERY big, weighing tons. He said steam-like breath came from two appendages on it's nose, which retracted even, as it was breathing. He said he could hear the breath sounds, even from that great distance! He said it had two large "flappers" for front feet. As they rose to try to get a little closer, it saw them and quickly backed back into the lake and was gone. He said it was the 2nd time they had seen it there, once a couple years previously, but well out into the lake, swimming, then sounding. He said he KNEW "Champ" existed, as he'd seen it twice with his own eyes. He swore to me he was being honest, and I never knew this man to even lie about the size of the fish he caught. He was a retired school teacher and a respectable man, in my opinion. Attached is my rendition of his
sketch.
-Jim
 (from Champquest archives at the Wayback Machine).

 And Scott added some comparisons to this report when he sent it to me. The first compares the outline in this sighting at Lake Champlain to that of the Margaret Munro sighting at Loch Ness, both only partly ashore.

 The second pasteup has to do with Plesiosaur nostrils as reconstructed from fossils and it illustrates the idea that the "Horns" are erectile nostrils that act as snorkels (The illustration at upper right is a moray eel)

 Scott's other comparison compiles various views from Champ as depicted by different witnesses over the years

 

And now for comparisons of my own. First off, the Champ in this case is

very much smaller that the Loch Ness sighting Scott compares it to: 

But then again the head-neck in each case is strikingly like the Surgeon's photo at Loch Ness

 

And I will concede the point about the horns on the face being erectile nostrils, it is the usual interpretation among Cryptozoologists that study such reports.

Scott Mardis Additional on Mansi photo at Lake Champlain

Comparison by Scott Mardis of the Lake Champlain Mansi photo with a Plesiosaur skeleton and with a carved horn artifact from Vermont of the Colonial age. This also looks like a very firm connection.

Jay Cooney has also just published Scott's article on the Mansi photo on the Bizzare Zoology blog:
http://www.bizarrezoology.blogspot.com/2014/04/blog-on-an-analysis-of-mansi-photograph.html

Lake Champlain Gar and Sturgeon Sightings

ScottMardis sent in some information regarding the possibility that some sightings at Lake Champlain were due to mistaken views of large fishes. He also mentioned that there were occasional reports of large eels (both at Lake Champlain and also at Lake Memphremagog) but there was independant evidence that conger eels occasionally stray in from the sea.

The initial description of the monster in Lake Champlain was obviously a gar and PURSUIT published this information in the 1980s

  Scott also sent some pages from the book The Untold Story of Champ, A Social History of America's Loch Ness Monster  by Robert E Bartholomew (2012), which included reports that in particular sounded like alligator gars and Atlantic Sturgeons:

In addition to these fish and the seals known to occasionally come into Lake Champlain from the sea,there are also reports of "Giant Water Lizards" and other reports that sound suspiciously like our Master Otter (the Native Americans' Mishipizhiw)

North America does not have any native species of large water lizards, in casual speech the term ordinarly means "Salamander" and in this case we would best understand it as "Giant hellbender". These Giant hellbenders as alleged in the area around Lake Champlain are said to be 2-3 feet long, occasionally reported as much as 6 feet long and possibly even longer by mistake.

Hellbender information http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/7160.html  LINK

P denotes reports of "Giant Water Lizards" that can be pink. The one in New Jersey was reported by Ivan T Sanderson. Other reports are further to the South, in the Carolinas We are not concerned with those especially now, what I wanted to bring up for discussion was the area I have circled on the Map (GH). Lake Champlain is in the Eastern part of that circle, but while I was douing research in Sanderson's archives I found some letters and clippings which led me to believe there was a giant salamander or "Giant Water Lizard"along the lines of the Chinese giant salamanders and which were probably related to the pink one Sanderson reported in New Jersey. None of these Eastward reports are ordinary hellbenders although they are said to look just like them. They are larger than the usual hellbenders at 2-3 feet long commonly, sometimes twice that, They also seen to be reported in the adjoining parts of Canada. (Mark A Hall discusses the ones in Ohio and there may be similar ones in the Ozarks but they also do not concern us here)

 Independantly we have good cause to suspect the giant otters or Master Otters in Lake Champlain and surrounding areas: we have some pretty good videos that seem to indicate them. There are also reports in Pennsylvania that clearly name them as Master-otters.  These animals would not be in competition with the salamanders ecologically and they live very different lifestyles

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