Alkha

In Siberian mythology, the personification of the darkness of the sky, a dragonlike monster who causes eclipses of the sun and moon. In one Buriat myth Alkha swallowed the sun and moon, plunging the earth into utter darkness. The gods became angry and cut his body into two pieces, one part falling to the earth and the forepart remaining in heaven. As a result, although the monster continually tries to swallow the moon and sun, each time they fall out of his back. In some myths Alkha is called Arakho. In one of these, told by the Buriat, Arakho lived on the earth eating the hairs off people's bodies. This made God angry because hair was needed for man's protection. As a result God cut Arakho into two parts. Yet the monster still tried to swallow the sun and moon. The gashes made by Alkha's fangs are visible on the surface of the moon. In a variant myth Arakho drank from a cup prepared by the sun and moon that contained the Water of Life. By drinking from the cup Arakho dirtied it, and God cut him in two as a punishment. But Arakho's forepart became immortal. Arakho still chases the moon, leaving his monstrous marks, which are called moon spots.

Guessing at Nessie

Artist's reconstruction of the plesiosaur. Illustration Orlando Grillo and Maurilio S. Oliviera

Those who are convinced that something larger than the average fish really does live in Loch Ness have come up with an abundance of theories. One of the most popular ideas is that Nessie is actually a prehistoric, aquatic animal called a plesiosaur, a creature that closely matches the Spicers' description of the beast that crossed the road. The main problem with this idea is that the plesiosaur has been extinct for 65 million years.

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Few prehistoric creatures come as close to matching the Spicer couple's physical description of Nessie as the long-necked plesiosaurs. These bulbous-bodied, flippered marine reptiles popped into the fossil record 220 to 175 million years ago, and they continued to flourish and adapt until about 65 million years ago when, it is assumed, they went extinct. Plesiosaurs came in a variety of species over the millennia, some with very long and slender necks, and others, called pliosaurs, with shorter necks and long heads. They ranged in size from about eight to just under 50 feet long!

It may have been the resemblance of the long-necked species to the famous "Surgeon's Photograph" that led people to suggest that Loch Ness contains a relict plesiosaur. But studies of fossil specimens, some discovered as recently as 2002, have caused zoologists to speculate that it might have been very difficult for a plesiosaur to hold its narrow neck out of the water while swimming. The neck would tend to bob forward due to gravity.

On the Web site, "The Plesiosaur Site," scholar and plesiosaur expert Richard Forrest says, "The long neck, being mainly bone and muscle will be denser than water, and denser than the main body which contains lungs, and a digestive system generating gasses. This would tend to make the head sink, and lead to a great waste of energy in trying to keep it up." The long neck would work admirably well, however, for foraging the sea bottom or surveying the surface from below.

Given its long rule of the prehistoric seas, the plesiosaur was a very successful animal in its time. Might it have been even more successful than scientists think, with a few individuals still cavorting along the bottom of Loch Ness?

Forrest, along with most other experts, thinks not. Plesiosaurs needed to breathe air, and sightings would be much more common in the Loch than they are since the animals would need to surface regularly. He also notes that Loch Ness is too cold for a marine reptile, that the lake is only 10,000 years old and the plesiosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, and that its body shape does not match sightings that describe undulating humps in the water. True believers answer that the plesiosaur could have adapted over time to changing water temperature, that it could have entered the Loch through underground passageways, and that the humps might have been formed by its back and tail.

Loch Ness is not the only place where plesiosaurs are thought to roam. They have been claimed for many other water habitats around the world wherever monsters have been sighted. But until a live or well-preserved dead plesiosaur presents itself for human inspection, most scientific investigators will continue to consider it strictly a predator of the past.

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Other researchers have suggested Nessie could actually be a long-snouted Baltic sturgeon, an out-of-place porpoise, an elongated seal, a string of otters swimming in a straight line (creating the appearance of a series of humps), a type of whale, shadows, or even a floating log spewed from the depths by a narrow, standing wave of water called a seiche. Some think that although the lake has been shown to be too small to support the breeding population that would be required to keep a monster family thriving (estimated at between 30-50 individuals), undiscovered undersea caverns and connections to the North Sea could provide a habitat for a family of large marine creatures. That also would help explain how a 2003 sonar sweep using satellite navigation and conducted of the entire lake by the BBC could fail to turn up any sign of Nessie. She might simply have been lounging in an adjacent cavern or cruising at sea.

Another line of thought states Nessie doesn't need a breeding population because she is not a physical being. Scotland has a tradition of a mythic creature called a kelpie, or water horse. Kelpies were said to lurk alongside lake or river trails, appearing as a beautiful horse that stood saddled and ready to ride. But the instant a hapless traveler mounted the alluring creature, it would dash into the water, revert to its true form, and dine on its rider.

Whatever Nessie is, the towns around Loch Ness know a good thing when it swims by. The village of Drumnadrochit advertises the "Original Loch Ness Visitor's Center," which offers boat cruises and a variety of Nessie tourist paraphernalia. The rest of the local economy also benefits from the hordes of monster-seekers who come hoping for a glimpse of the lake's mascot.

Chances that a good photo may be taken of Nessie have increased in modern times with more and more people trying to capture a "money" shot of the monster. On June 9, 2007, organizers of a music event called "Rock Ness" handed out 50,000 cameras to attendees in the hope that one might catch an image of the lake serpent. Just a week before that, a bounty of $1 million British pounds was offered for Nessie's capture. If Nessie ever is discovered to be a real creature, perhaps the find will not be made by scientists but by one of the millions of visitors who have made the Loch a must-see destination.

DINOSAUR ARTIFACTS

A gold figurine from Ashanti Province in Ghana, West Africa, and now located at the University of Pennsylvania Museum seems to depict a sauropod dinosaur. It was made as a trademark representing a particular family of gold dealers and resembles an Apatosaurus (bulky body, four legs, long tail), except for a relatively large head that looks more like a Tyrannosaurus. Some researchers see it as a representation of the Mokele-Mbembe. Margaret Plass, African Miniatures: The Goldweights of the Ashanti (London: Lund Humphries, 1967); “An Iguanodon from Dahomey,” Pursuit, no. 9 (January 1970): 15–16; Bernard Heuvelmans, Les derniers dragons d’Afrique (Paris: Plon, 1978), pp. 336–337.

In October and November 1924, an expedition led by archaeologist Samuel Hubbard and paleontologist Charles W. Gilmore explored the Havasu Canyon area on the Havasupai Indian Reservation west of the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. Near where the Tobocobe Trail intersects Lee Canyon, they discovered pictographs on the red sandstone along the trail, one of which seems to show a bipedal ornithopod dinosaur. Oakland Museum, Discoveries Relating to Prehistoric Man by the Doheny Scientific Expedition in the Hava Supai Canyon, Northern Arizona (San Francisco, Calif.: Sunset Press, 1927); A. Hyatt Verrill, Strange Prehistoric Animals and Their Stories (Boston: L. C. Page, 1948).

In July 1944, German merchant Waldemar Julsrud discovered a cache of clay and stone figurines depicting dinosaurs, weird animals, humans, masks, and vessels on El Toro hill near Acámbaro, Guanajuato State, Mexico. By the mid-1950s, he had found some 33,500 separate objects, which filled his twelve-room mansion and, it is said, forced him to sleep in the bathtub. The collection is no longer open to the public, and it is suspected that only a fraction of the original number of objects exist now. Though apparently seven distinct artistic styles are represented in the collection, none are typical of artifacts found elsewhere in Mesoamerica. Most, if not all, of the dinosaur-like figures are fanciful or composite animals, though some have seen resemblances to the sauropod Brachiosaurus, the ornithopod Iguanodon, and an Ankylosaurus. Other figures resemble such extinct Pleistocene fauna as Camelop s. Radiocarbon dates for the artifacts range from 4530–1110 b.c., though in some cases, laboratories have retracted these findings upon learning of their controversial nature, referring to suspected contamination or even “regenerated light signals.” William N. Russell, “Did Man Tame the Dinosaur?” Fate 5 (February-March 1952): 20–27; Charles C. Di Peso, “The Clay Figurines of Acambaro, Guanajuato, Mexico,” American Antiquity 18 (1953): 388–389; William N. Russell, “Report on Acambaro,” Fate 6 (June 1953): 31–35; Ronald J. Willis, “The Acambaro Figurines,” INFO Journal, no. 6 (Spring 1970): 2–17; “The Julsrud Ceramic Collection in Acambaro, Mexico,” Pursuit, no. 22 (April 1973): 41–43; Charles H. Hapgood, Mystery in Acambaro (Winchester, N.H.: Charles H. Hapgood, 1973; Kempton, Ill.: Adventures Unlimited, 2000); Dennis Swift, Dinosaurs of Acambaro, http://www.omniology. com/3-Ceramic-Dinos.html.

In 1966, Peruvian physician Javier Cabrera obtained a rock on which was a picture of a fish, seemingly carved thousands of years ago. He found where it came from and eventually amassed a collection of thousands of volcanic rocks with pictures of dinosaurs, kangaroos, mastodons, winged humanoids, telescopes, open-heart surgery, and other fantastic images. Now housed in his Museo de Piedras Grabadas in Ocucaje, near Ica, Peru, Cabrera claims they were made 1 million– 250,000 years ago by an unknown culture. Others have accused Cabrera of producing the stones himself or at least turning a blind eye to local forgers. Ryan Drum, “The Cabrera Rocks,” INFO Journal, no. 17 (May 1976): 6–11; Javier Cabrera Darquea, El mensaje de las piedras grabadas de Ica (Lima, Peru: INTI-Sol, 1976); David Hatcher Childress, Lost Cities and Ancient Mysteries of South America (Stelle, Ill.: Adventures Unlimited, 1986), pp. 29–31, 48–52; Michael D. Swords, “The Cabrera Rocks Revisited,” INFO Journal, no. 48 (March 1986): 11–13; Robert Todd Carroll, “Ica Stones,” in Skeptic’s Dictionary, http://skepdic.com/icastones.html.

DINOSAURS (LIVING)

Until the 1980s, there was ongoing controversy (occasionally reflected in cryptozoological literature) over whether dinosaurs had a single ancestor or many different ones. In the current view, it appears that Richard Owen had it right in 1842 when he invented the name Dinosauria (“terrible reptiles”), based only on three known fossil genera that he thought had one common ancestor. The defining characteristic of the Dinosauria is now considered to be (along with a few other minor skeletal characteristics of the femur, humerus, ankle, and foot) a ball-andsocket joint at the hip, like the mammals, that supports the body weight and allows for an erect, bipedal gait in certain types. As a group, they flourished for 160 million years, from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (225–65 million years ago). The most primitive dinosaur yet found is the 3-foot-long Eoraptor, discovered in northwestern Argentina in 1991.

Not all huge fossil reptiles were dinosaurs. The flying pterosaurs, the marine plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, the diapsids Tanystropheus and Champsosaurus, the mammal-like therapsids— none of these are classed with the dinosaurs.

The Superorder Dinosauria is subdivided into two orders, the Saurischia and the Ornithischia.

The Saurischia included carnivorous, bipedal therapods such as Tyrannosaurus and the herbivorous, long-necked sauropodomorphs such as Apatosaurus. They had in common elongated necks, long second fingers, and skeletal cavities housing air-filled sacs connected to the lungs. It was this type of dinosaur that survived extinction at the end of the Cretaceous in the form of Birds.

The Ornithischia included dome-headed and horned cerapods (such as Iguanodon and Triceratops) and the armored thyreophorans (such as Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus). They shared key characteristics of the jaws and teeth that enabled them to chew plants efficiently.

Giganotosaurus may have been the largest carnivorous animal that ever lived on land. A theropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Argentina that was first described in 1995, it was at least 42 feet from nose to tail tip. Vertebrae from a related species yet unnamed that was discovered in Patagonia in 2000 indicate an even greater length of 45 feet. The largest Tyrannosaurus rex was only 40 feet long.

At 110–120 feet, the herbivorous sauropod Seismosaurus of the Late Jurassic of New Mexico is the longest land vertebrate yet discovered, weighing in at 33 tons. Its tail alone was about 50 feet, and its head and neck were nearly that length. The Cretaceous sauropod Argentinosaurus of Patagonia may also have attained this size, though it is only known from vertebrae and limb bones. In late 1999, some vertebrae from a possibly even larger sauropod were discovered in southern Patagonia; preliminary estimates gave it a length of 167 feet.

Different species of dinosaurs went extinct throughout the Mesozoic, not just at the end of the Cretaceous. For example, more time elapsed between the death of the last Stegosaurus and the hatching of the first Tyrannosaurus than between the extinction of the last dinosaur and the birth of the first modern human.

There is no unambiguous evidence for dinosaur fossils after the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. Dinosaur teeth mixed with mammalian bones in Paleocene deposits have been found in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana, but it’s not clear whether they had originally come from earlier, dinosaur-bearing levels. Redeposition of older fossils into younger sediments by rivers or streams is not uncommon.

Surviving dinosaurs are not a zoological impossibility, especially in areas that have been geologically stable for the past 60 million years (such as Africa). Large dinosaurs that are coldblooded (ectothermic) would have a better time surviving in hot, equatorial regions than warmblooded (endothermic) animals with high metabolic rates. Ectotherms also require only 10 percent of the amount of food taken in by full endotherms. However, determining dinosaur energetics and thermal biology without living models is, at best, a speculative endeavor.

The two major types of African dinosaur in this section are the Mokele-Mbembe, which might be a surviving sauropod, and the Em ela- Ntouka, which some think might be a ceratopsian survivor such as Monoclonius. Both are known by many different local names. The others in the list are much less documented.

Mystery Dinosaurs

Em ela-Ntouka;

Mbielu-Mbielu-Mbielu;

Mokele-Mbem be;

Partridge Creek Beast;

Row;

Silwane Manzi.

SOUTH AMERICAN DINOSAURS

Percy Fawcett

A few rumors of huge, amphibious beasts in South America are on record, but no local Indian names have surfaced.

In 1882, an odd, 40-foot saurian was killed on the Río Beni, El Beni Department, Bolivia. It was said to have two additional, doglike heads sprouting from its back, a long neck, and scaly armor. “A Bolivian Saurian,” Scientific American 49 (1883): 3.

The explorer Percy Fawcett mentioned dinosaur- like animals briefly on several occasions as occurring in the Río Guaporé area on the border of Bolivia and Brazil, in the Madidi region of La Paz Department in northwestern Bolivia, and in swamps around the Rio Acre in Acre State, Brazil. Percy H. Fawcett, Exploration Fawcett (London: Hutchinson, 1955).

In late 1907, Franz Herrmann Schmidt and Rudolph Pfleng allegedly encountered an aquatic, dinosaur-like monster, 35 feet long, in a swampy area in the forested swamps of Loreto Department, Peru. It had a tapirlike head “the size of a beer keg,” a snakelike neck, and heavy, clawed flippers. Their bullets seemed to have no effect on the animal. Franz Herrmann Schmidt, “Prehistoric Monsters in Jungles of the Amazon.” New York Herald, January 11, 1911.

In 1931, Swedish explorer Harald Westin saw a 20-foot lizard walking along the shore of the Rio Mamoré on the border of Brazil and Bolivia. It had an alligator-like head, four legs, and a body like a distended boa constrictor. Harald Westin, Tjugu års djungel- och tropikliv (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1933).

Leonard Clark heard rumors of an animal resembling a sauropod dinosaur from Peruvian Indians around the Río Marañón, Peru, in 1946. Leonard Clark, The Rivers Ran East (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1953).

In 1975, a Swiss businessman hired a seventy-five-year-old guide named Sebastian Bastos, who told him that the Amazonian Indians knew of animals 18 feet long that overturn canoes and kill humans. Bastos himself had survived an attack several years earlier. Liverpool Daily Post, January 3, 1976.

Australian Giant Monitor

AUSTRALIAN GIANT MONITOR seen in 1979 by herpetologist Frank Gordon in the Wattagan Mountains, New South Wales. (William M. Rebsamen/Fortean Picture Library)

Unknown LIZARD of Australia.

Variant names: Burrunjor (in Northern Territory), Mungoon-galli, Murra murri (in the Blue Mountains), Whowie (in Riverina).

Physical description: Length, 20–30 feet or more.

Behavior: Attacks cattle.

Distribution: Northern New South Wales; Arnhem Land, Northern Territory; Cape York, Queensland.

Significant sightings: In 1975, a group of bushwalkers found large tracks and tail marks at the edge of the Wallangambe Wilderness in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.

On December 27, 1975, a farmer near Cessnock, New South Wales, saw a bulky, 30-foot monitor lizard moving through scrub brush. It was mottled gray in color, with dark stripes along the back and tail, and stood 3 feet off the ground.

In early 1979, herpetologist Frank Gordon was driving his Land Rover in the Wattagan Mountains in New South Wales south of Canberra when he saw a reptile 27–30 feet long by the side of the road. It rose up and ran away on all four legs into the neighboring woods.

In July 1979, cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy was called to a freshly plowed field by a farmer. Across the field were thirty or so tracks that seemed to have been made by an enormous lizard. While most of the tracks had been ruined by rain, Gilroy was able to make a plaster cast of one that had been preserved.

Possible explanations:

(1) The Perentie (Varanus giganteus), Australia’s largest lizard, grows to 8 feet long; some individuals might attain 10 feet. It is cream-colored, with dark-brown speckles, and it occurs from western Queensland to the coast of Western Australia.

(2) Surviving Megalania prisca, a 15- to 21- foot lizard that lived in central Australia in the Pliocene and Pleistocene (2 million–20,000 years ago). At 1,300 pounds, it weighed ten times as much as the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) and was probably an active predator and scavenger. Its teeth were nearly 1 inch long. At least some specimens had a sagittal crest.

Sources: Rex Gilroy, “Cessnock’s Fantastic 30 Ft. Lizard Monsters,” Strange Phenomena and Psychic Australian, March 1979; Rex Gilroy, “Australia’s Lizard Monsters,” Fortean Times, no. 37 (Spring 1982): 32–33; Rex Gilroy, “Giant Lizards of the Australian Bush,” Australasian Ufologist 4, no. 4 (2000): 17–20.