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.

Followup on Magaret Munro Sketch

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.

Comparisons with Original Munro Sketch of Loch Ness Monster

Jay Cooney called my attention to a new and prior version of the sketch accompanying the Margaret Munro sighting at the shore of Loch Ness and posted by Scott Mardis on Facebook. I did a photoshop job on it and eliminated the grey halftones on it, and this was my resulting cleaned-up image. Jay then added the photos of the 1972 Rines underwater flipper photos at Loch Ness to point out that the sketch had the same sort of flippers, as shown below:

I mentioned in my reply comments to him that the diamond shape for the flippers were long established at Loch Ness and that Torquil MacLeod's sketch of his land sighting reconstruction also featured the rhomboid flippers some twelve years before the Rines photos were taken.

The information on the sighting is as follows, quoting from an email letter I received from one of the other Friends of Scott Mardis on Facebook while discussing the matter:

The original publication was in the Inverness Courier of June 5^th 1934 :

 

The sighting took place on Sunday 3rd June 1934 at 6:30 AM for 25 minutes. It was at Kilchumein Lodge just east of Fort Augustus. The witnesses was Margaret Munro, a maid at the inn. It is notable for being a sighting on shore at Loch Ness. Contemporary to this account is the diary entry of Dom Cyril Dieckhoff, a monk at Fort Augustus Abbey and a keen Loch Ness Monster investigator. His entry is also dated the 5th June and was first printed in Constance Whyte's book More Than A Legend in 1957:

 

The next story was recorded by Dom Cyril Dieckhoff under date 5th June 1934: Margaret Munro, daughter of Dan the Miller and a native of Fort Augustus, was maid to Mr. and Mrs. Pimley, Mr. Pimley being a master on the staff of the Abbey School and living at Kilchumein Lodge, (close to the Abbey turbine house).
The Lodge overlooks Borlum Bay and one Sunday morning Miss Munro was looking out of a window at about 6.30 a.m. On the shore of the Bay she saw, as she put it, the biggest animal she had ever seen in her life. Using binoculars she observed that the creature was almost, but not entirely, clear of the water. It was 300 yards away and she watched it for twenty-five minutes, from 6.30 to 6.55 a.m.

Asked afterwards why she did not wake Mr. and Mrs. Pimley she said that, being new in their service, she did not care to, as it was so early in the morning. Her description runs: 'Giraffe-like neck and absurdly small head out of all proportion to the great dark-grey body—skin like an elephant—two very short fore-legs or flippers clearly seen. The animal kept turning itself in the sunshine and at times arched its back into one or more humps.' Finally, 'it lowered its head, quietly entered the water and disappeared'.

Soon after 9 a.m. Mr. and Mrs. Pimley went down to the beach to examine the spot. There was a slight impression on the rather heavy shingle and in the centre a small branch had been pressed into the gravel. Before this experience Miss Munro had not believed in the Monster.

 

The story appeared in the newspaper The Scotsman  the next day.  Nicholas Witchell’s The Loch Ness Story adds further details in that he carries a sketch of what Margaret Munro allegedly saw (reprinted second below) as well as a photograph pointing to the probable location of the creature. (below)

The Scotsman report from the 5th June carried a  another drawing of the creature. The article states:

"Describing the animal to our correspondent, who drew a sketch of it from her description ...."

 And the Witchell sketch is shown below for comparison. It seems both sketches were done by reporters of The Scotsman but approved by Miss Munro. The second one has been "cleaned up" more

 

 

Munro says directly that the head and neck were similar to the famous "Surgeon's photograph" and both sketches do show that.

"Surgeon's Photo", image reversed.

Steuart Campbell is his book The Loch Ness Monster - The Evidence calls this an Otter sighting and so does Maurice Burton: Adrian Shine favours the seal interpretation. Ronald Binns and Tony Harmsworth make no mention of the case. Witchell attempts to pin down the actual location while Costello in In Search of Lake Monsters takes notes of the arching of the back into humps. The creature was partially sitting in the shallow waters of the bay and did not fully venture onto land during the sighting. At a guess, the water depth was about one or two feet deep. This accounts for the lack of information on any rear limbs normally associated with the creature as they were still under the water. This all suggests that the creature was partly facing the woods with its back to the loch at some angle. The creature was seen to swinging its head and neck from side to side presumably scanning out the territory. She said it was“the biggest animal she had ever seen in her life” and Margaret Munro was presumably talking about something bigger than an elephant (Meaning bigger than something in the range of ten feet high and twenty five feet long). The lighter underpart of the creature has been reported in other sightings and the dark grey skin is commonly stated. Maurice Burton  says took out his own 8x binoculars to examine a tree in his back garden at a range of 220 yards and said he could not make out the bark detail. He thus reasons that Margaret Munro could not claim to talk about the skin being like that of an elephant: however, the statement is obviously meant as a comparison of the colour and not the texture.

Margaret Munro's mention of the back arching into humps is important since variable-contour humps would be ordinarily dismissed as nothing more than witnesses being deceived by standing waves as they wash along the loch. Transforming humps are one of those features well known to Loch Ness Monster researchers and a point of controversy. James MacDonald, a local worker for the Forestry Commission, observed the monster seventy hours before Margaret Munro on Thursday May 30th. He reported a hump about 400 yards away surfacing near Cherry Island which then moved off. James was a trained observer with the Lovat Scouts during the Boer War and back then as a forestry patrolman. He was also a salmon fisherman of Loch Ness with forty years experience. He said, "Twice it flattened out itself, then, apparently contracting, resolved itself into two humps, each nearly as big as an upturned boat, and several feet of water separating them."  There was also a sighting of the creature the day before John MacDonald's experience (Wednesday) by a Miss Fraser and others who saw nearly the same thing as his sighting but without the humps changing shape. Their sighting saw the monster appear in Borlum Bay and then trace a route to a point between Cherry Island and the old Railway Pier. Mr. MacDonald saw the reverse route. It was almost as if the creature had submerged in front of Miss Fraser and stayed there until the next morning to resurface in front of James MacDonald. Mr. MacDonald's sighting was chronologically before Margaret Munro, but the story was not made public until the same day as Munro's story when it was printed in the same edition of the Inverness Courier. So, it can be argued that Munro's story receives corroboration from two additional reports, the MacDonald story and the beach inspection by the Pimleys.

(This article came to me as a submission but most of the information is at the site
http://lochnessmystery.blogspot.com/2013/10/nessie-on-land-margaret-munro-case.html
And I have checked the information I received against that article, correcting the submitted informaton in places.)

The Most Exceptional Loch Ness Land Sighting by Torquil MacLeod

The climax of all the land sightings was Torquil MacLeod's sighting in February of 1960, with the ceature partially ashore but with its tail end trailing off in the water. This was in many ways the most exceptional of the land sightings because it was the lagest creature ever reported ashore, out of the largest series of "Creature" reports in the Loch in any sense, and one of the best-observed to make out the most of the creature's shape. Subsequent collectors of the reports have tended to take an attitude of feigned stupidity in order to question the witness' specific statements made in his report.

I shall start with the summary given by Darren Naish on his blog about land sightings at Loch Ness, primarily because it has been referenced here recently otherwise.
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/10/loch_ness_monster_on_land.php


"Rather better, perhaps, is Torquil Macleod's 1960 account where a gigantic creature (perhaps 60 ft long) with squarish flippers was watched through binoculars for as long as nine minutes at a distance of about a mile. It was big and grey and had a projection that Macleod described as being like a large elephant trunk. The creature was apparently half ashore, and at the end of the sighting it curved into a U shape and flopped back into the water, apparently without much of a splash (is that even possible for an animal this size?) (Witchell 1975) [artistic version of Macleod's sighting shown modified from Witchell(1975) back to reflect original source in Dinsdale (1960)]

Macleod produced a sketch of his sighting, but it has been argued that there is no way he could have seen what he claimed to with the binoculars he had, given his position on the opposite shore (Binns 1983). Binns also drew attention to the fact that Macleod wasn't a neutral observer, but a fervent believer who longed for a sighting. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean anything either way (or does it?)."



Torquil MacLeod's sketch done after the sighting "I Think the LNM Looks like THIS", from Dinsdale's Loch Ness Monster, p 144

Binns' objection is exceptionally peculiar. He argues that it would have been impossible to see such an object through McLeod's Highpower binoculars BUT he assumes that what he had seen was a man in a boat, the same explanation he gives for Dinsdale's film. Thus he expects the object MacLeod saw to have been one-third to one-fourth the length of what MacLeod actually REPORTED. It is therefore not reasonable for him to assert that the witness could not have seen the much larger object with his binoculars. The thing was as big as a house.

MacLeod's account as printed in Dinsdale's book includes these paragraphs:

Upon turning my glasses on the moving object, I saw a large grey-black mass (I am inclined to think the skin was wet and dry in patches) and in the front there was what looked like an outsize in Elephant's trunks Paddles were visable at both sides but only at what I presumed was the rear end, and it was this end (remote from the "trunk") which tapered off into the water. The animal was on a steep slope, and taking its backbone as an approximate straight line, was inclined about 15-20 degrees out of my line of sight: the "trunk" being at the top and to the left and the tail being at the bottom, in the water, to the right...
For about 8 or 9 minutes the animal remained quite still, but for its "trunk" (I assume neck although I could see no head as such) which occasionally moved from side to side with a slight up and down motion-just like a snake about to strike; but quite slowly. It was, to my mind, obviously scanning the shores of the Loch in each direction.
In the end it made a half-jump, half-lurch to the left, its "trunk" coming right round until it was facing me, then it flopped in the water and apparently went straight down: so it must be very deep close inshore at that point [Dinsdale's footnote affirms this] As it turned I saw a large squarish-ended [rhomboid] flipper foreward of the big rear paddles-or flippers...[and appends overall reconstruction sketch at the end]

Dinsdale's book also contains four of the position sketches, all quite clear, and none of them exactly matches whe two wash-drawings reproduced in Witchell and at Naish's site. The versions at the start of this posting are my modifications of the wash drawings in attempting to make them match MacLeod's originals more closely.

A lot of the confusion over this sighting arises from Roy Mackal's The Monsters of Loch Ness which seems to be the most common source for most later retellings. In making his remarks about this case, Mackal states:

"Witness seems unclear as to whether he observed head-neck or tail end. He definitely saw a pair of appendages and he believes they were at the rear: however when his sketches are examined, it is obvious they could equally well be at the front of the animal. Later, as the the animal changed its orientation prior to flopping into the water, he saw the third, square-ended flipper foreward of the big rear paddles; he shows it in the same anatomical location that the Spicers observed something flopping up and down. In another context...he reverses his earlier position and says there were only 'two very short forelegs or flippers clearly seen' This does seem to fit better with the["my"] overall impression of his drawings."

Mackal is being disingenuous. It is clear from his statement that the witness took the end on land to be the head end, that it was scanning the banks and that the head end took the lead in diving back into the water. There would be no sensible reason for the tail end to curl over and lead the rest of the body on a return to the water. The description throughout says the creature is viewed tail end on with the head end on shore. That is not an ambiguous statement about whether the head end or the tail end was being observed it was a description of his vantage point in the sighting. The fact that Mackal transparently and very clumsily attempts to force the appearance that there actually is an ambiguity as to whether the tail end or the head end seen on land stands out from the start of his comment to the end. And MacLeod's statement to David James does indicate a change in his story: at that time he had come to believe he actually had seen both foreflippers, on land and free of the water, while the rear flippers were inthe water and partially obscured.

Basically, Mackal has misrepreseneted the entire account and all authors following after him and quoting him are using a badly distorted version of the story. Using the version as printed by Dinsdale is much preferable. Mackal did have an ax to grind as to the matter of "The witness did not know if he was looking at the head end or the tail end" and onhis table of the usual sightings of Loch Ness creatures he has only ONE column to hold descriptions of both ends. This is not really usually a problem since most witnesses (such as tin this case) have a pretty good idea of which end is front and which one is back from the way the creature is acting. Mackal has said there was a problem in that area and because of that he must needs force ALL of the reports to have that same problem.

Dinsdale did make the suggestion that there was one creature living in the Loch of really unusual size and that Torquil's sighting was of it. Another instance of the same individual's passage was supposed to have been on P.T. MacNab's 1955 photo of the Loch Ness Monster near Uruquart castle (which is 50 feet high). Binns allows that it represents a real object, which he says is a wave. I am all for sightings of monsters turning out to be standing waves but this photo does not have any of the characteristics of such waves. Perhaps it is the one fullgrown Longnecked Seaserpent in the Loch, and we can trace its appearances between 1955 and 1965 fairly well. IT could have lived for decades in the Loch and grown to its full size there, but more than likely it was a separate individual intrusion into the Loch, especially since Dinsdale also logged a couple of fullsized "Monster" reports as travelling up and down the River Ness in flood, and in different years.




Dinsdale,Tim Loch Ness Monster,Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961, London

Mackal,Roy The Monsters of Loch Ness, Swallow Press, 1976, Chicago

Binns, R. 1984. The Loch Ness Mystery Solved. W. H. Allen & Co, London.

Costello, Peter. 1975. In Search of Lake Monsters. Panther Books, St. Albans.

Witchell, Nicholas. 1975. The Loch Ness Story. Penguins Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex.