FRONTIERS OF ZOOLOGY Dale A. Drinnon has been a researcher in the field of Cryptozoology for the past 30+ years and has corresponded with Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson. He has a degree in Anthropology from Indiana University and is a freelance artist and writer. Motto: "I would rather be right and entirely alone than wrong in the company with all the rest of the world"--Ambroise Pare', "the father of modern surgery", in his refutation of fake unicorn horns.
I made a scale comparison for the Miss Margaret Munro sighting at Loch Ness using an elephant and a human for reference. It is a given that Margaret Munro knew about elephants because she mentioned the colour was like one, and it is known that elephants were to be seen at the circus that had been in that area recently then. She said that the creature was "Bigger than the biggest animal she had ever seen", presumably meaning an elephant. the shapes are not exactly comparable but we can attempt a volume comparison.
Going by this comparison it is a sound guess that she intended to mean the head-neck was at least twelve feet long and the body dragging behind twenty-four feet long, for a total visible length of 36 feet. The whole length was not seen and the sighting being half in and half out of the water is also like Torquil MacLeod's 1960 sighting at Loch Ness.
As also noted in the former article, the head and neck here were drawn after "The Surgeon's Photo" at Loch Ness but in this case the neck seems not to have been held upright but forward at an angle, because the motion of its turning from side to side was very obvious from a long way off.
Although there can be some argument about the Zoological identity of the creature Miss Munro saw, it was most clearly NOT an ordinary seal or an otter! It is certain that she would probably not have seen such a small creature distinctly from her position and then mistaken it for such a large one even through binoculars at that distance. The scale of the creature had to be as large as she said it was for her to even get a clear view of it at that range.
Artwork by Sir Peter Scott depicting hypothetical Loch Ness plesiosaurs, 1975.
Submitted by Scott Mardis
The top figure in the original illustration was too dark and had to be left off.. I find these to be in good agreement with my general model except for the nonappearance of a midline-dorsal fleshy crest or fringe here, and the base of the neck has less of a taper to it in this version, which in my model performs the function of a shock absorber for the neck while swimming forward. For mechanical reasons something like that will be important to the functioning of a living animal. The small size of the head and the thinness of the forward portion of the neck are indeed close to the statistical averages here, a head two feet long and a neck a foot thick behind the head being typical proportions for a 40 foot animal (Halve that for a 20 foot animal, and at the current time I think 20 to 40 feet long is a sound estimate for the standard size in these animals. The smaller end of the size range would be the females and the larger end of size estimates would be the males, and more inexact estimates of the size at 150% to 200% of the standard are common in some areas, such as at high seas, where size estimates tend to be less accurate generally. That yields 30 to 60 feet long at 150% and 40 to 80 feet long at 200% of standard size estimations, and these correspond to the basic size range estimations for "Longnecks" and "Merhorses" as given by Bernard Heuvelmans in In The Wake of the Sea Serpents)
Statements made about sizes and proportions are the end products of an exhaustive study I made while I was with the SITU and had access to Sanderson's files: the statistical analysis included every known report of Sea Serpents and Lake Monsters at the time and the final results were submitted to the SITU in 1980 in the form of a 100 page report that was never published. I still have a draft of the 100 page report. The reports were taken all together as a whole and then again in various subcategories, including reports from each lake or series of lakes, and from geographic subsections of the sea and sea coast, and as an evaluation of Heuvelmans' categories from In The Wake of the Sea Serpents as measured one against the others. This study found a uniformity between most reports and a general agreement between the reports in each of Heuvelmans' categories, but resulted in the unexpected result that nearly all "String of buoys" sightings were probably due to wave effects, and that this category was the largest one for "Unknowns" worldwide. The results for the remaining sea-serpents in general, the Loch Ness Monster, Champ of Lake Champlain, the Heuvelmans category of Longnecks, and even the Patagonian Plesiosaurs, were all closely similar. Counter to Heuvelmans there was not any good reason to consider Longnecks to be tailless, tails still featured in about 10% of the reports, a proportion similar to the Loch Ness Monster reports: and while the longnecked section of Merhorses was also similar to the Longnecks, there were also clearly different kinds of Merhorses differentiated by the length of the necks. One subsection of Merhorse reports surprisingly turned out to be the proper size and proportions to match elephant seals after the statistics were compiled. "?LN?SE" reports also tested out as being mostly identical to the regular Longnecks statistically.
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"
" 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.
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)
Here are my statistical outcomes from doing my own analyses on Longneck reports worldwide, together with explanatory notes. The 40 foot long figure was the one obtained by Dinsdale and my data tends to reinforce that: but in sightings at sea the figures are typically at a 60 foot scale, or measurements 150% of these. I assume the difference is because the sightings at sea tend to be less accurate because the scale and distance cannot be made out as easily.
The reconstructions of the head were done independently of the video resulta below, which come here by way of Scott Mardis' comparisons and from the "Not Just Nessie" website.
The profile is very significantly the same wedge shape tapering down from back to front, with a wide gash of a mouth and the eyes placed about halfway along the length.
"Not Just Nessie": below is Scott Mardis' comparison to a Plesiosaur skull.
Above, Oudeman's SS reconstructions showing the heads as being much the same shape as the statistical averages reconstruction I made myself. I have put a lighter-coloured circle around the eye to make it show up better in this enlargement.
Below are two views from sightings of the Loch Ness Monster showing the appearances of the head from above and from in front too compare to the other comparable points of view from the other locations. The view of the neck overall in the drawing of a recent Periscope sighting at Loch Ness shows the longer forward section of the neck, much the same thickness throughout, and then the larger and thicker rear portion of the neck (Significantly also shown in the Surgeon's Photo) The same type of neck features in the Corinthian SS witness' illustration reproduced below.
The Cuba SS drawings chosen in the Sea Slug article actually help illustrate that the reported shape of the head is consistently reported in all of the reports from the different points of view.
These illustrations are from Heuvelmans' book In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents and they are added here to illustrate the apparent head shape of Longnecks from several angles. The Southwold SS has a good view of the wedge-shaped head tapering down from back to front, and Mrs. Borgeest's sighting shows the very flat and wide "Snakelike" head from front-on. Heuvelmans remarks on both aspects (The wedge-shaped, taper-down profile is what is sometimes called "Horselike") in the case of the Corinthian SS it seems the Euryapsid openings in the back of the skull are taken for eyes (this seems to be a consistent misinterpretation among some witnesses and it is even possible that this area is marked with false decoy-eyes such as occur in many different kinds of animals. There is a quandary about sea-serpent eyes in that some of them have them prominently marked while the rest (Femalse and young) have the eyes coloured about the same as the rest of the animal and the eyes are not obvious. In the reconstruction composite above I have indicate the eye sockets as being fairly large and visible from all angles, but it is entirely possible witnesses are seeing false eyespots instead. Among their own kind the false eyespots serve to divert potentially damaging attacks from the real eyes when males are sparring. And my interpretation of the Corinthian SS is that it actually is a male surprised while sparring with another male, and the creature has a mouthful of the "Mane or fin" material ripped off of the other male. The position of the material makes it look more like it is coming out of the mouth rather than from the places where animals ordinarily have whiskers.
The head on this one is exaggerated by making it too long generally but it does show about the right overall shape as seen from above.The statistical norm would have it that the head would be much smaller in proportion to the neck, and more especially much shorter.
Depiction of traditional Scandinavian Sea Serpent. Same kind of head, I think the dark patches behind the eyes once again indicate the presence of Euryapsid skull openings such as are also indicated in many other sightings and artistic depictions.. Below "The Children of Loki"
with the big snake being the Midgard Serpent. The head is modeled after carvings of Dragons on Viking churches and such, also traditional, and once again the same type of head. [Traditionally the tongues are depicted as pointed, not forked) There is an earlier separate blog entry on Viking depictions of Longnecks and why they are Euryapsids, and other blog articles on various similar dragons heads the world over and back to the dawn of civilization, with specifications as to why they are Euryapsids, too. Snakes do not have skulls that are anything like a Plesiosaur's skull and they have no structure corresponding to a Euryapsid skull opening.
The original study was done between 1975 and 1980 in several revisions and the SITU archives should still have handwritten copies of the earlier drafts. The document was ultimately never published but these result are easily summarised and presented as they are here. The 1980, final version of the manuscript included "A Field Guide to Water Monsters" which was being submitted for publication in PURSUIT as a series of articles starting in 1986, but stopped when I moved out of New Jersey, and started up again for submission to PURSUIT in 1990 (Typed articles with illustrations provided, also ultimately unpublished, PURSUIT became moribund at about that point)
ADDENDUM:
"Joe Richardson" is becoming dreadfully tedious insisting that I explain every single instance of why a Euryapsid skull opening has to be a Euryapsid skull opening. I have said on numerous occasions, the matter is written up in earlier blogs on this site. "Joe" really must learn how to look things up in the provided index and do his own research. I refuse to spoon feed him any further and I refuse to repeat myself endlessly on matters where I have already answered him before. He has never shown me once that he even pays attention when I cite sources to him and he never seems to learn anything, he continues to re-assert the same tired old arguments even after he has been thoroughly refuted. "Joe Richardson" is hereby served notice that he is making an irritant of himself and his comments will be deleted until and unless he can stop sounding like a broken record. And once again, if you "Joe" do not have the anatomical expertise which gives you the authority to criticize or comment on Plesiosaurian anatomy, your remarks carry no weight as criticism or indeed even as any sort of a relevant argument.
