Showing posts with label cryptozoology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cryptozoology. Show all posts

Friday, February 18, 2011

Flathead Lake Monster



It seems BC conservationists have run into a less than reluctant if not outright hostile BC government when it comes to saving Flathead Lake, part of the Waterton National Park system, from resource development. So in a variation on P3 funding, they have put up their own money to save the valley.....

Conservation groups put up $9.4-million to save Flathead Valley

Cryptozoologists should be concerned as well since Flathead Lake is home to Ogopogo's cousin the Flathead Lake Monster. And even if it is an ancient fossil fish, they too are endangered. Except in Wisconsin apparently

Slow start: Sturgeon spearing season on Lake Winnebago

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Cryptozoology Comes Of Age

Long dismissed as the domain of Ufology and conspiracy theories, cryptozoology has come of age and become a legitimate science thanks to the discovery of various new animal speices previously unknown to science.

If you've read Scott Weidensaul's excellent book The Ghost With Trembling Wings (2002), you'll recall the story of Louise Emmons and the giant Peruvian rodent she discovered. But before I get to that, let me say that The Ghost With Trembling Wings isn't about ghosts at all, but about the search for cryptic or supposedly extinct species. Think thylacines, British big cats, Ivory-billed woodpeckers, Cone-billed tanagers, the resurrection of the aurochs, Night parrots, Richard Meinertzhagen and the Indian forest owlet. It begins with Weidensaul's search for Semper's warbler Leucopeza semperi, an enigmatic parulid endemic to St. Lucia, discovered in 1870 and last seen alive in 1969 (although with a trickle of post-1969 sightings, some reliable and some not so reliable). If you're interested in the hunt for cryptic species and zoological field work and its history, it is mandatory that you obtain and read this inexpensive book.
Louise Emmons is a highly distinguished, experienced mammalogist who has worked on bats, tree shrews, cats big and small, and rodents, and is also the foremost expert on the mammals of the Neotropical rainforests (she wrote the only field guide to Neotropical rainforest mammals: Emmons 1999a). On 15th June 1997, while on an expedition to the northern Vilcabamba range of Cusco, Peru, she was walking along a forest track when, lying dead on the track in front of her, she discovered a big dead rodent. Pale grey, but handsomely patterned with a white nose and lips, and with a white blaze running along the top of its head, it was over 30 cm in head and body length, and with a tail over 20 cm long. Its broad feet, prominent and curved claws, large hallux, and palms and soles covered in small tubercles indicated that it was a tree-climbing species. A large bite wound on the neck indicated that it had recently been killed by a predator, probably a Long-tailed weasel Mustela frenata.
And it was entirely new: no one had ever recorded anything like it before. In her description of the new species, Emmons (1999b) named it Cuscomys ashaninka (meaning 'mouse from Cusco, of the Ashaninka people') and showed that it was a member of Abrocomidae. This is an entirely South American group previously known only from Abrocoma Waterhouse 1837, members of which are sometimes called rat chinchillas, chinchilla rats or chinchilliones, and from the Miocene fossil Protabrocoma Kraglievich 1927. Abrocoma is known from eight species (A. bennetti, A. boliviensis, A. cinerea, A. vaccarum, A. uspallata, A. budini, A. famatina and A. schistacea), among which A. boliviensis was only recognised in 1990 and A. uspallata in 2002 (Glanz & Anderson 1990, Braun & Mares 1996, 2002). Incidentally A. bennetti has 17 pairs of ribs - more than any other rodent. Abrocoma produces midden piles, and Pleistocene rodent middens from Chile have been identified by DNA analysis as having been produced by Abrocoma (Kuch et al. 2002).

And speaking of unkown species here is a possible explanation for the Ogopogo.

Could unknown Okanagan creature be baby Ogopogo?
Kent Spencer, Canwest News ServicePublished: Monday, November 10, 2008
VANCOUVER - A TV documentary crew has added to the mystery surrounding Ogopogo by finding an unknown biological specimen in the depths of Okanagan Lake.
"I told a radio station tongue-in-cheek I thought it was the baby Ogopogo," monster-watcher Bill Steciuk of Kelowna said Monday after the History Channel completed a nine-day shoot.
"It was all curled up. The features were really hard to see. You could see a little head tucked in and a straight tail with no fins.

"It's a huge mystery. We have no idea what it is," said Steciuk, who helped organize the shooting locations.
The unidentified specimen has been shipped to the University of Guelph in Ontario for DNA tests, but Ogopogo buffs will have to wait until February to find out more, when the Monster Quest program weighs in on the legendary mega-serpent.
Ogopogo, first sighted in the 1870s, is reputed to be 12 metres long with multiple humps and a small head.
The History Channel, which had a bigger budget than previous expeditions, mounted a thermal infrared imaging camera on a helicopter for the first time. It picked up an unidentified shadow on the lake, while sonar spotted something over three metres long moving in the water.
"That's pretty big for a fish," said Steciuk.
But divers made the most interesting find in an underwater cave on the west side of Rattlesnake Island.
"I couldn't recognize it," said Steciuk. "Nor could anyone else. Maybe a new species has been found."


See
Sea Serpent
Die Vurm
Strange Sea Creatures
Chupacabra A Shunka Warakin
Cryptozology Part 1
Cryptozoology Part 2
They Walk Among Us


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Saturday, November 17, 2007

Chupacabra A Shunka Warakin

A what? Well thanks to BigCityLiberal perhaps we have a solution to what the Chupacabra is. Perhaps this cryptozoological phenomena is just another name for a different cryptozoological creature. Perhaps they are one and the same. Since they are both cryptids. Perhaps the Chupacabra is a Shunka Warakin.

In the Great Plains of the American West, from at least Montana to Nebraska, there have been reports of an animal that seems to be a hyena. With a sloping back and hyena-like features, this beast was known to the Ioway Indians as the shunka warak'in. Similar creatures, with different names, were reported from the lands of other tribes. This animal was generally described as having dark fur, often black and sometimes red. The shaggy areas were distributed in a different way than on wolves. White settlers also thought they had seen this creature, and some were even mounted as trophies. Although the present wherabouts of these trophies is now unknown, one famous trophy had a picture taken of it, although it might have been a strange-looking wolf mounted by an incompetent taxidermist. Only DNA testing could settle the question.


After all the later is a supposed extinct North American Wolf Hyena hybrid as this picture shows of one shot and preserved in the 19th Century.


[shunka.jpg]

Shunka Warak'in

In the late 19th century, the Hutchins family moved into an area of Montana along the Madison River's West Fork, in Broadwater County. They were soon to report encounters with a mysterious canine beast known to Native Americans.

One of the descendants of the original clan was zoologist Ross Hutchins. In 1977, he would write Trails to Nature's Mysteries: The Life of a Working Naturalist. Within this book is reference to one of the most obscure creatures to grace North America's cryptozoological landscape. The following account is reproduced from that book.

One winter morning my grandfather was aroused by the barking of the dogs. He discovered that a wolflike beast of dark color was chasing my grandmother's geese. He fired his gun at the animal but missed. It ran off down the river, but several mornings later it was seen again at about dawn. It was seen several more times at the home ranch as well as at other ranches ten or fifteen miles down the valley. Whatever it was, it was a great traveler...

Those who got a good look at the beast described it as being nearly black and having high shoulders and a back that sloped downward like a hyena. Then one morning in late January, my grandfather was alerted by the dogs, and this time he was able to kill it. Just what the animal was is still an open question. After being killed, it was donated to a man named Sherwood who kept a combination grocery and museum at Henry Lake in Idaho. It was mounted and displayed there for many years. He called it ringdocus.

An Ioway Indian named Lance Foster approached Loren Coleman in 1995 and informed him of traditions existing in that tribe of an animal called a shunka warak'in ('Carrying-Off-Dogs') which cried like a human when killed. Foster's descriptions of an animal that looked something like a hyena and the existence of one in an Idaho museum are testimony that the animal killed at the Hutchins ranch was a Shunka Warak'in.

Coleman speculates that the creature may have represented a survival of a prehistoric species known as Borophagus, although my own researches into the animal makes it seem even more likely that it may belong to another prehistoric species, a creodont known as Hyaenodon montanus. H. montanus was a rather lightly built member of the Neohyaenodon subspecies


And these pictures shows the alleged Chupacabra caught in Texas this summer.




Mythical Chupacabra
Eric Gay / AP
Phylis Canion holds the head of what she is calling a Chupacabra at her home in Cuero, Texas, Friday, Aug. 31, 2007

Creature ID'd As Coyote, Not Chupacabra


updated 8:32 a.m. MT, Fri., Nov. 2, 2007
SAN MARCOS, Texas - The results are in: The ugly, big-eared animal found this summer in southern Texas is not the mythical, bloodsucking chupacabra. It's just a plain old coyote.

Biologists at Texas State University announced Thursday night they had identified the hairless doglike creature.

Oh well.....there are lots more Chupacabra still out there.

But the Shunka Warakin is extinct. Or perhaps not....

Wolf,dog,Shunka Warakin?

Posted by Mark on February 24, 2007, 11:04 am

Did anyone ever here of the dna results on that wolf creature they shot from a helicopter in Nov 2006 in Montana,that killed 120 sheep? It was 106 lbs,& orangeish color.In the 1800's a settler in Montana shot & mounted what they called Ringdocus,the Indians called it Shunka Warakin ("carrying off dogs").I have a picture of the mount in a book I have.Anyway both storys r neat but I never read a follow up story on the dna results.Some said it could've been a wolf from the great lakes region but I never saw an orange wolf out here.Mabey a Wolf-dog X. Who knows?


Your True Tales
August 2007
- Page 6

Shunka Warakin
by James

I was eight in 1992 and went camping with my friends in his backyard. We made camp and lit a fire. We were in the tents when a shadow was cast on the side. We thought it was a dog at first and I went outside to chase it off. But it was not a dog. The most I remember is its eyes, they were red. The fur was black and reminded me of a hog. It smelled awful. Its front legs were longer than the back legs. It just stared at me and then it just walked back into the woods.

I talked to an Native friend of mine and he heard of it. My wife brought home a book called Weird Georgia and it had a picture and an article about it. The picture made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. The book called it a "wog". We Googled "wog" but didn't get much, but then we found a picture of "shunka warakin" and the hair stood up again. I live in southern Georgia and actively deer hunt, but have never seen another creature like this - and hope never too.

Cue eerie music....


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Friday, September 14, 2007

Kraken Good Read

A very interesting post on the Kraken in Pop Matters. While the American author eruditely espouses the role of the giant squid in literature, myth and lore, as well as recent scientific research, he somehow misses any reference to the ultimate giant octopi/squid; Cthulhu and the works of American master of the macabre H.P.Lovecraft.

Especially since he begins his essay referring to the Pirates of the Caribbean. I would have thought this to obvious to miss. Davey Jones is modeled on pop culture versions Lovecraft's Cthulhu.

Along with giant octopi who sleep at the bottom of the sea dreaming eldrich thoughts, Lovecraft had a fascination with giant worms.

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http://blog.wired.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/05/17/cthulhu.jpg


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See;


sea monsters

There Be Monsters

CUTHULU TWO


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Thursday, September 06, 2007

That's A Sound I Like

Ok I will accept the charge of speciesism when it comes to mosquitoes. In this case we can thank the arachnids for effectively doing what pesticides can't. And I am partial to spiders after all.

A real monster spider’s web has been found in Lake Tawakoni State Park in Texas, USA. Apparently the web, stretching 180 metres, is the result of millions of spiders working together, to the mystification of park rangers.

The web is proving effective in controlling the mosquito population. Donna Garde, park superintendent, said that “There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs.”


Though scientists are yet to explain why, or which species, the spiders built this.


RICHARD MICHAEL PRUITT/DMN

Donna Garde, park manager at Lake Tawakoni State Park, sees tens of thousands of mosquito carcasses weighing down the webs.

Entomologist Professor John Jackman of A&M University said that similar webs were reported every couple of years. They are either created by social cobweb spiders working together, or by spiders spreading out from a central point. He commented that “until we get some samples sent to us, we really won’t know what species of spider we’re talking about”.

There is much debate amongst experts over the reasons for the web's construction, with some believing it was created by social spiders living as a colony, and others suggesting it is possibly a system of mass dispersal, with the spiders building webs in order to spread out. There is also uncertainty over the species of spider responsible, although it is known that smaller webs of an otherwise similar nature have been discovered elsewhere in the park, on another trail. It is thought that the species is likely a member of the genus Tetragnatha.

John Jackman, a professor and extension entomologist for Texas A&M University and author of "A Field Guide to the Spiders and Scorpions of Texas," said that the phenomenon is not particularly unusual and that reports are submitted to him every few years detailing similar webs. "There are a lot of folks that don't realize spiders do that," Jackman said. "Until we get some samples sent to us, we really won't know what species of spider we're talking about."

However, other experts disagree over the unusual nature of the discovery. "From what I'm hearing, it could be a once-in-a-lifetime event," said Herbert "Joe" Pase, a Texas Forest Service entomologist. "It's very, very unusual."

Norman Horner, an emeritus biology professor at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, has been studying spiders in Texas since 1965 and he says he's never seen anything like this. In 2002, there were reports of a massive spider web in northern British Columbia. And there have been anecdotal reports in other locations over the years.

"Social spiders," the rare exception, typically only form colonies in tropical areas across the southern hemisphere, said Dr. Horner, but they have been spotted in South Texas. After seeing pictures and learning that the webs would have been weaved in only a few weeks, Mr. Quinn decided this was probably not the work of social spiders.

Another theory is that the spiders secreted silk that lifted them into the air and landed them at this location. Dr. Horner, who has not visited the site, guessed these spiders dispersed together and landed on a windy day.

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Multiple species of spiders helped weave the gargantuan spider web at Lake Tawakoni State Park, a Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist determined Friday.

But the highly unusual discovery of both frontal web and long-jawed spiders together raises more questions about just how the eye-catching phenomenon occurred, said Mike Quinn, the parks department biologist. He plans to send web and spider samples to Texas A&M University for definitive identification. The web spans an area estimated at 200 square yards. Once snowy white, the web has turned brown from the masses of mosquitoes and other bugs trapped in it.

Based on his preliminary evaluation, Mr. Quinn believes that it could only have resulted from what scientists call a “dispersal event.” Essentially, that means that baby spiders drifting in the wind all ended up in the same place somehow, for some reason.


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Monday, September 03, 2007

Chupacabra

What is it? And since she found this corpse in July why are the professionals speculating instead waiting for the forensic pathology and DNA test of this creature. Dog, fox, coyote, whatever, lets quit the 'scientific' explanations until the science is done thank you.



Phylis Canion holds the head of what she is calling a Chupacabra at her home. She found the strange looking animal dead outside her ranch and thinks it is responsible for killing many of her chickens. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

But what folks are calling a chupacabra is probably just a strange breed of dog, said veterinarian Travis Schaar of the Main Street Animal Hospital in nearby Victoria.

"I'm not going to tell you that's not a chupacabra. I just think in my opinion a chupacabra is a dog," said Schaar, who has seen Canion's find.

The "chupacabras" could have all been part of a mutated litter of dogs, or they may be a new kind of mutt, he said.

Wildlife officials say the animal is actually a very sick, grey fox that possibly has a parasite.

Phylis Canion found the corpse of a strange looking critter on her property in late July. Claiming that the animal killed numerous cats in the area and sucked the blood from her chickens for a number of years, Canion collected the blue-colored road kill off Hwy.183. Upon closer inspection, she couldn’t place a name to it.

Determined to find out the identity of her discovery, she contacted KENS-5, a CBS broadcast affiliate in San Antonio. The news station was also curious, and sent a tissue sample to Texas State University-San Marcos for DNA testing.

The Department of Biology received the remains late this summer and is currently running tests to divulge the classification of the animal in the lab’s Beckman-Coulter CEQ 8800 DNA sequencer.

“This is part of a Mexican, Caribbean and Latin-American cultural phenomenon,” said Michael Forstner, professor of biology at Texas State and facilitator of the DNA tests. “While we don’t have the skull, from the images we have we can tell you that it’s a canid, it’s in the dog family Canidae.”

The reason the department doesn’t possess the skull is because the head of the animal was removed by Canion. She placed it in her freezer to preserve it for a decorative mount on her wall, leaving DNA testing as the remaining means in which to conclusively identify the beast.

“We’ll extract the DNA and amplify it using DNA markers suitable for mammals and carnivores,” Forstner said. “When we’re done, we’ll run the results against our online database and see what it matches.”

Supposed chupacabras that have undergone testing in the past often turn out to be wild dogs, foxes or coyotes. In this case, Forstner says the department should easily be able to find a match.



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Saturday, August 18, 2007

Another Croc


Another crocodile tale, except this monster turned out to be a bearded lizard. And proving once again that so called eye witness testimony is the flimsiest form of evidence, for science or justice.

Of course while relatively small the bearded lizard is commonly called a 'dragon'.

And as usual you can find out more about
dragons, sea monsters and die vurm.
on my blog.


Sometimes a crocodile is just a lizard

Vancouver -- A reported "15-foot crocodile" that drew a half-dozen police cars to a Vancouver backyard on Sunday night after panicked 911 calls from a resident turned out to fit easily into a shoe-box-sized enclosure when brought before the media yesterday.

Animal-shelter staff were looking after the bearded lizard thought to have wandered away from his owners' home.

"Sometimes they can be hard to handle, and will bite, but this guy's pretty gentle," said Paul Teichroeb, chief licence inspector for the City of Vancouver, holding up the sandy-coloured creature yesterday during a police news conference.

Police say they got a 911 call from a panicky homeowner who claimed there was a five-metre-long crocodile in his back yard.

Six officers were sent in, only to discover a 30-centimetre-long reptile called a bearded lizard.

Chief licence inspector Paul Teichroeb displays Bud a bearded dragon lizard found in a backyard on 14th Avenue.

Chief licence inspector Paul Teichroeb displays Bud a bearded dragon lizard found in a backyard on 14th Avenue.
Photograph by : Stuart Davis, Vancouver Sun

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Godzilla Croc


You know that urban myth about gators in the New York City sewer system....well it ain't New York and it ain't in a sewer and it's a croc not a gator.

A small crocodile called Godzik, or Little Godzilla, which escaped from its cage in southern Ukraine at the end of May, is still at large and apparently enjoying itself, an official said Friday.

The 70-centimetre (two-foot, four-inch) long Nile crocodile, which swam away during a publicity show on a beach on the Sea of Azov, is defying attempts to recapture it.

Dariel Adjiba, of the local office of the emergencies ministry, said the reptile had apparently made its home on an abandoned barge which ran aground in the shallow sea, where it could often be seen sunning itself.

              Close up of a nile crocodile in captivity. A small Nile crocodile called Godzik, or Little Godzilla, which escaped from its cage in southern Ukraine at the end of May, is still at large and apparently enjoying itself               Photo:Mustafa Ozer/AFP

AFP Photo: Close up of a nile crocodile in captivity. A small Nile crocodile called Godzik, or...

Godzik had been with a travelling circus for about a year when it escaped at Maryupol on the northern shore of the inland sea.

In the old days this kind of thing would give rise to the myth of dragons, sea monsters and die vurm.


SEE:


Strange Sea Creatures


I Thought I Saw A Putty Cat


Congo's Ghosts


The Fountain Of Youth


Turning Off The Nile


I Don't Do Mornings


Nessie was an Elephant?


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Thursday, August 02, 2007

Strange Sea Creatures


HAMLET

And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Scientists back from a three-week probe in the deep waters off Nova Scotia and Newfoundland discovered a surprising diversity more than 2 1/2 kilometres below the surface.

"Not so long ago, these deep waters were thought to be barren, and what we're looking at and finding is that they're quite rich," said Ellen Kenchington, one of 20 scientists who participated in the research mission aboard the coast guard ship Hudson.

This was deep-water fauna, creatures of the inky blackness and the stuff of Jules Verne: The metre-long dumbo octopus (so named for its prominent fins); the xenophyphore, a single-celled organism better known as "the Green Blob"; and the long-nosed chimera.

Amidst the weird and wonderful are three types of coral key to understanding climate change: Primoa, Paragorgia, and Keratosis, also known as seacorn, bubblegum, and bamboo coral respectively.

An octopus with ears like an elephant? Scallops that hang like bats? Yup, they're real and they live off the East Coast.

The creatures were found after Canadian marine scientists fitted the coast guard ship Hudson with Canada's most powerful deep-sea diving robot, and sent it to explore water too deep for humans.

The octopus was spotted on the second dive at 2,500 metres. When the robot got close enough, the researchers could see the metre-long octopus had fins near its eyes.

"It looks like Dumbo the elephant," Kenchington said, showing off some of the more than 3,000 digital images, hundreds of hours of videos and dozens of live samples taken during the research trip.

It was a creature that had never been seen in the Atlantic before, but Kenchington later found out one had been spotted in the Pacific Ocean.

The robot picked up images of many other creatures, including orange scallops hanging from underwater cliffs, and yellow and pink bubblegum-coloured coral.

More than half of the dives were below the 1,000-metre threshold, and they discovered "at least a dozen" species not previously found in Canadian waters. Particularly striking, she said, was the discovery of a type of bubblegum coral far from the nearest known colony of that species. The largest sea-floor invertebrate, bubblegum coral can live hundreds of years and grow at least a metre off of the bottom.

"How did it get there?" Dr. Kenchington mused. "How are they connected to the nearest neighbours, which are hundreds of miles away?"

SEE:


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Monday, July 23, 2007

Sea Serpent

Here is an interesting Sea Serpent that actually has been documented in scientific journals. And it is Canadian.

Cadboro Bay in British Columbia claims Caddy, or Cadborosaurus willsi, a serpent-like creature that to this day remains the only monster ever described in a scientific journal.

The existence of the species has been suggested by the original specimen-based description in a refereed scientific journal in which the type juvenile specimen is represented by 3 different close-up quality photographs (in the B. C. Provincial Archives in Victoria), in which at least three new-born relatively tiny precocial "baby" specimens have been independently held by at least three pairs of human captors during the past 40 years, and by more than 100 documented sightings, photographs, sonar images, and sketches of live animals made independently at predicted times and places, subsequent to the original description in 1995 and continuing to the present

In the Amphipacifica Journal of Systematic Biology Drs. Paul H. LeBlond and Edward L. Bousfield review the large aquatic reptile known as "Caddy" from the Pacific coast of North America. Bousfield and LeBlond believe the historical records about this creature contain sufficient evidence of "specimens in hand" to conclude "the animal is real and merits formal taxonomic description," and propose it be named and diagnosed with vertebrate class Reptilia as Cadborosaurus willsi, new genus, new species.

Many people have spotted a large marine cryptid from coastal areas of the northeast Pacific Ocean and sporadically these sightings have been reported by the news media. Bousfield and LeBlond describe it as "a large serpentine animal (adult body length 15-20 meters), clearly unlike any whale, pinniped, fish, or other existing vertebrate animal that makes only brief appearances at the sea surface, presenting distinctive head, a long neck, and trunk region that often forms into number of vertical humps or loops. Its swimming speed is astonishing to those who try to approach it, invariably unsuccessfully."


And while the article the first link is from;Sea monsters: Not real, but good for business describes many fresh lake sea monster sightings, it basically claims they are all made up. Of course as per usual I believe many of them may be sightings of the rare and endangered ancient dinosaur fish the sturgeon.


See:

Die Vurm

Snakes Alive

Nessies Relative

Nessie?



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Chupacabra In Texas?

So is this strange animal discovered in Texas the mythological Porte Rican Chupacabra, or just a naked coyote? Place your wagers.


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See:

Die Vurm

Congo's Ghosts

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Monday, July 16, 2007

Die Vurm

Gathering dust for a hundred years; a source for De Vermis Mysteriis
A University of Alberta paleontologist has helped discover the existence of a 95 million-year-old snakelike marine animal, a finding that provides not only the earliest example of limbloss in lizards but the first example of limbloss in an aquatic lizard.

The fossil was originally collected during the 19th Century from a limestone quarry in Slovenia. It then sat at the Natural History Museum in Trieste, Italy for almost 100 years before Caldwell and a colleague found it in 1996 during a trip to Europe. He later connected with Alessandro Palci, then a graduate student in Italy whom he helped supervise, and they worked on the fossil together.

The researchers soon realized the lizard's front limbs were not formed during development. "There was a moment when I said, 'I think we stumbled on a new fossil illustrating some portion of the aquatic process of losing limbs,'" said Caldwell. "There are lots of living lizards that love to lose their forelimbs and then their rearlimbs, but we didn't know it was being done 100 million years ago and we didn't know that it was happening among groups of marine lizards."

Ancient giant serpents were known as worms (vurms, wurms),in Europe. Giant serpents or legless lizards may have existed into the modern age. They are not to be confused with Dragons, which are a different kind of beastie, though they commonly are.

If huge giant things roaming the Scottish hills were not enough, we have also had to contend with huge dragon things too. If you had been around in the 12th century you could have visited the Linton Worm who lived in a hollow outside Jedburgh on Linton Hill in the Scottish Borders (still called Worms Den to this day). The dragon terrorised the country, eating cattle and generally making a nuisance of himself. He was finally dispatched at the point of a peat-coated lance by a courageous - some would say reckless - lad called Sommerville of Larison. There have been no more dragon-sightings since.


Like the Lambton worm which was featured in Bram Stokers Lair of the White Worm. Which was made into a passable bit of gothic horror blasphemy by over the top art house director Ken Russell.


The Nordic saga of the Giant worm plays a role in the popular revolutionary imagination of Wagners Ring Cycle.

Now the Giants have the Hoard and Ring safe-kept by a monstrous Worm in the Gnita- (Neid-) Haide [the Grove of Grudge]. Through the Ring the Nibelungs remain in thraldom, Alberich and all. But the Giants do not understand to use their might; their dullard minds are satisfied with having bound the Nibelungen. So the Worm lies on the Hoard since untold ages, in inert dreadfulness: before the lustre of the new race of Gods the Giants' race fades down and stiffens into impotence; wretched and tricksy, the Nibelungen go their way of fruitless labour. Alberich broods without cease on the means of gaining back the Ring.
In the period around this first prose résumé and the first libretto sketches for the Ring, the years 1848 and 1849, Wagner also wrote several important texts which may shed light on his intentions with the tetralogy. Among them are «Die Wibelungen. Weltgeschichte aus der Sage» (The Wibelungen. World History as told in Saga), which includes several sections on the Nibelungs, «Die Revolution» (The Revolution), «Die Kunst und die Revolution» (Art and Revolution) and «Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft» (The Art-work of the Future), all written in 1849 These works are very likely to have been influenced by the philosopher Feuerbach, whom Wagner is known to have read at that time, and with whose writings stylistically common traits have been found at least in The Wibelungen, by the anarchist Proudhon, whom he probably also read (certainly in Paris in 1849), as well as by the ideas of the socialist thinkers Max Stirner, Mikhael Bakunin and Karl Marx.

A Brief Introduction to Norse Myth


When Ragnarok would come,
the winter would last for three years and would be
extremely bitter. The two giant wolves, Skoll and Hati,
would devour the Sun and Moon whilst starts would fall
from the heavens. The giant worm Nidhogg, which was
gnawing on the roots of the Yggdrasil for the longest of
times, would finally succeed. The root Nidhogg succeeded
in gnawing through was the root that supported Niflheim.
Loki, who had been confined for causing Balder's death
escaped his imprisonment. Loki would rally with the
frost giants and his offspring and would lead them
against the Sons of Mankind and the Gods. Fenrir would
escape the magical Fetter, the Midgard Serpent,
Jormungand, would slither out of the ocean. The Frost
Giants and Mountain Giants would leave their home in
Jotunheim, sailing on a ship known as Naglfar, whilst
their cousins the fire giants would leave their realm
of Fire, Muspelheim.

And Australia has recorded the largest earth worm ever, 13 feet long.

Of course worms are not legless serpents, nor some strange creature out of Tremors. Or out of the sewer in a town in Georgia.


Employees at the Huddle House had been having problems with the restaurant’s drainage line clogging up and when plumbers came by to check on the problem they found that some unknown species of animal had apparently crawled through the city sewer lines toward the Huddle House until it became lodged in the line just short of the outside clean-out plug. When a worker spotted the plug, he grabbed it and began pulling it out. And he pulled and he pulled and he pulled until an eight foot long, white, skinless, eyeless snake-like creature emerged. At first glance, it appeared to be a long grease clog. But closer inspection revealed that its composition was of a meat-like consistency. And it had the makings of a mouth. But, apparently, had no skeletal structure.


Or in the Gobi Desert.
The first time you hear about the Mongolian Death Worm you assume it has to be a joke; it sounds too much like the monster from a B-movie or an especially dire comic book to be true. A five-foot (1.5m) long worm dwelling in the vast and inhospitable expanses of the Gobi Desert, the creature is known to Mongolia’s nomadic tribesmen as the allghoi khorkhoi (sometimes given as allerghoi horhai or olgoj chorchoj) or ‘intestine worm’ for its resemblance to a sort of living cow’s intestine. Apparently red in colour, sometimes described as having darker spots or blotches, and sometimes said to bear spiked projections at both ends, the khorkhoi is reputedly just as dangerous as its alarming appearance would suggest, squirting a lethal corrosive venom at its prey and capable of killing by discharging a deadly electric shock, even at a distance of some feet.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are offering a free documentary, watchable on their website, on the hunt for the fabled "Mongolian Death Worm". In 2005, respected writer-researcher Richard Freeman led a four man team from the CFZ to Mongolia in search of the notorious worm; a fabled reptilian beast said to spit venom and kill its victims with electric blasts. The investigation is documented in "The Lair of the Red Worm", which can be viewed in two parts - Part One and Part Two.
And in this day and age of modern virtual myths you can play a Giant Worm in a PC Game.


Giant worms fascinate us.
We loved them in Beetlejuice, we thought they were cool in Dune, and we loved watching them be blown away in Tremors. I've seen giant worms pop up as enemies in games before, most recently in Lost Planet. Death Worm may be the first game, indie or otherwise, that lets us play as the giant beasts though.


SEE

Nessie?

Snakes Alive

Nessies Relative


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Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Nessies Relative

Is this skeleton any relation to Nessie since there have been reports of that fresh water monster being seen and filmed in Loch Ness.

Whatever was filmed is a shadow underwater, which could be a large sturgeon.

This at least is a skeleton. Though how it got into an iceberg is a puzzle itself.

Scientists are puzzled by pictures that appear to show a mammalian skeleton jutting out of an iceberg that recently drifted past the east coast of Newfoundland. (CP PHOTO/HO/Department of Fisheries of Oceans)


Scientists are puzzled by pictures
that appear to show a mammalian skeleton jutting out of an iceberg that recently drifted past the east coast of Newfoundland. (CP PHOTO/HO/Department of Fisheries of Oceans)

See

Nessie was an Elephant?


They Walk Among Us

Shark

Cryptozology Part 1

Cryptozoology Part 2

Dinosaurs

Fossils


Monsters



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