Are Sea Monsters Real?

[murd0c]

By the looks of things I think they maybe.

As a mysterious skeleton is washed up on a British beach... Do sea monsters REALLY exist? | Mail Online

For centuries they’ve been a part of maritime legend, inspiring curiosity and terror in equal measure. Lurking in the depths of the oceans, shocking in size and appearance, gigantic serpents and prehistoric monsters are as much a source of fascination as ever, especially in Hollywood.
In the past two or three years alone, attacks by huge undersea beasts have provided the centrepiece battles at the ends of blockbusters such as Pirates Of The Caribbean, Clash Of The Titans and The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader.
But are such tales of strange sea beasts more than mythology? Is there any evidence to suggest that some of these monsters of the watery deep - from Jules Verne’s giant squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea to the legendary Kraken, a leviathan sending sailors to their doom - might actually exist?
Mysteries of the deep: Only this week, Margaret Flippence stumbled upon this skeleton while strolling along the beach near Aberdeen. Experts were still trying last night to work out what the mystery 30ft washed-up remains are
Certainly, the study of the possible existence of sea monsters and other creatures of legend - known as cryptozoology - remains an area that captures the imagination of scientists and laymen alike.
Last week I took part in a major debate at the Zoological Society in London at which I and my colleagues wondered whether there might be more to these stories than mere myth.

Only this week, photographs emerged of the large carcass of an unidentified sea creature washed up on the beach near Aberdeen. It is the subject of fevered speculation, with some claiming it is a sea monster and others (more sensibly) saying it’s a plain old pilot whale.
More...A monster of a find: Couple walking their dogs discover 30ft carcass of sea creature rotting on beach
Captured on film: Is this Alaska's own Loch Ness monster?

Further fuelling the popular enthusiasm for sea monster lore, on Tuesday night the Discovery Channel screened footage, filmed by Alaskan fishermen, of what appeared to be an immense sea creature — at least 30ft long — with humps on its back, breaking the surface of the ocean.
What may simply be an example of a whale and its wake has been imaginatively recast by viewers as the Alaskan Nessie.
Washed up: Margaret Flippence, 55, was walking on the Scottish beach with her husband Nick when she found this unknown creature's skeleton
Given that previously unknown large marine animals continue to be discovered, the idea is far from outlandish. It’s perfectly plausible that species of shark, rays and whale still wait to be identified. Indeed, according to some estimates, there could be as many as 50 species of large sea‑going animals awaiting discovery.
Despite advances in sonar equipment, remotely operated cameras and deep-sea submersibles, only a fraction of the vast oceans that cover so much of the Earth have been examined.
It was only in 1976, for instance, that the incredible Megamouth shark was discovered. And it was found entirely by chance when one became entangled with the anchor of a U.S. navy ship off the coast of Hawaii.
An unusual-looking, deep-water creature with a large, rubbery head and enormous mouth that can open 4ft wide, the Megamouth is unlike any other shark previously seen. To this day, sightings remain extremely rare.
Startling discovery: The monster captured on video in 2009 in Alaska appeared to be up to 30ft with humps on its back
Equally rare is Omura’s whale, named after a biologist from Tokyo. This creature, around 33ft in length, was first caught by a Japanese research vessel in the Pacific in the late Seventies — yet hardly any specimens have been caught or filmed since.
So we can be extremely confident new species will keep on being found as we continue to explore our planet.
What we don’t know is whether any of these species might match those creatures mentioned in the fantastical tales passed down to us through history or in more recent eyewitness accounts of sea monsters.
The Roman writer Pliny gives an account of a giant octopus in his natural history books, while sea dragons began to feature on the edges of medieval maps in the 13th century to demarcate the edge of charted waters.
By the time of the Renaissance, tales of strange creatures sighted on the horizon or washed up on shore were increasingly common.
On his return journey from Newfoundland in 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, an adventurer and half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, claimed to have encountered a strange, lion-like sea monster with glaring eyes.
By the 18th century, the reports had become more elaborate.
Mythical: The Loch Ness Monster has had many sightings in the Scottish Highlands including this picture taken in 1934 allegedly showing the creature
Hans Egede, a missionary from Denmark, reported a sighting of ‘a most terrible creature’ off the coast of Greenland in 1734. He recorded that ‘the monster lifted its head so high that it seemed to be higher than the crow’s nest on the main mast. It was longer than the whole ship’.
Could at least some of these accounts refer to encounters with real animals?
Research on the reliability of eye-witnesses shows that there are many reasons to be cautious about claimed monster sightings. People’s memories are typically untrustworthy in recalling distances and sizes, especially in the huge, empty expanse of the ocean.
So what might appear to be a strange creature could just be a wave or a trick of the light, or perhaps just the fanciful vision of sailors stranded for too long in becalmed waters.
Over the years, many accounts of sea monsters have talked of large, slithering marine serpents, apparently utterly different to anything recognised by science.
Egede’s account of 1734 is one of the classics. But it is possible that what people actually saw were nothing more than the penises of courting male whales, for such organs can be more than 10ft long.
In the same vein, others have spoken of seeing bizarre, dinosaur-like creatures with long necks, deep, staring eyes and whiskers round their mouths. Perhaps these are descriptions of elephant seals, which can reach 16ft in length, have a distinctive proboscis overhanging their jaw (rather like an elephant’s trunk), can move rapidly through water and emit a loud roar which could strike fear into an onlooker.
One common notion about sea monsters is that, if they exist, then perhaps they could be modern-day descendents of plesiosaurs, the marine reptiles that ruled the seas during the age of the dinosaurs.
After all, the sightings often super-ficially seem to match some of the characteristics — such as a long neck or giant flippers — of these long extinct creatures of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
The belief that the oceans might contain descendants from the dinosaur age is known as the ‘prehistoric survivor paradigm’.
But there are two central problems with this idea. First of all, what we know of plesiosaur fossils shows that the living animals did not really match the modern sea monsters described by eyewitnesses.
While the modern-day sea monsters are described as raising their necks high out of the water and even waving them around, plesiosaur necks were far less flexible.
In fact, it seems plesiosaurs were simply unable to raise their massively long necks above the water’s surface. If you have ever tried to lift a heavy pole out of the water from one end, you will know how gravity makes such a task impossible.
The second main problem with the prehistoric survivor idea is that there are absolutely no fossilised plesiosaurs from rock younger than 65 million years old. If some plesiosaurs had survived into our present age, we would expect a continuous fossil record.
Ah, say those who want to believe these marine giants are still with us, what about the coelacanth — the 5ft fish that was thought to have become extinct at the same time as the plesiosaurs, but in the Thirties was discovered to be living in the seas off southern Africa?
There were, it is said, no coelacanth fossils younger than 65 million years old, yet it obviously survived down the millennia.
However, the bones of plesiosaurs are extremely large and tough, which means not only that they remain intact but they are also easy to recognise and classify.
It is a completely different story with the coelacanths, whose bones are much more fragile, small and vulnerable, so traces are far harder to find.
Whatever your view — and experts remain divided — it seems that the best biological evidence suggests we are unlikely to discover a terrifying new monster lurking in the depths. But that’s not to say it won’t happen.



Read more: As a mysterious skeleton is washed up on a British beach... Do sea monsters REALLY exist? | Mail Online

[Greenstoner]

its always interesting to read this kind of articles..

i dont know if they're actually consider as monsters... but there are a lot of creatures in the deep sea we dont know about and im pretty sure they can be very large in size too

[highfive]

[Culverin]

That doesn't look so weird. Maybe a malnourished humpback baby or something. I've seen WAY weirder stuff online.


Also, this beast is probably where all the tales of sea serpents come from.
King of herrings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Mr.Money]

I've heard a strange story of a guy boating in Vancouver's ocean with a white boat & while going along he seen a strange large creature underneath him in the water as big as his boat & the Large all white Creature was interested swimming right under the boat thinking it's "one of its own"...

guy got scared shitless cause he said he saw whales before & other swimming animals,but nothing all white & keeping a steady pace swimming with a boat.


next thing the guy said it was even worse having nothing on board to protect himself "just in case" whatever it was would attack or not,but it seemed really friendly if it was gliding under him.

[LSF22]

Alaskan Monster Hunt: Mystery Animal Expert : Video : Discovery Channel

[wasabisashimi]

Originally Posted by LSF22

Alaskan Monster Hunt: Mystery Animal Expert : Video : Discovery Channel

dont get suckered in by TV production making it look like reality show. Just a bunch of sturgeon catching red necks

[Vansterdam]

[JordanLee]

Originally Posted by Culverin

That doesn't look so weird. Maybe a malnourished humpback baby or something. I've seen WAY weirder stuff online.


Also, this beast is probably where all the tales of sea serpents come from.
King of herrings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reddit

[StylinRed]

FALKOR NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO











what is this like the 5th unknown monster to wash up on shores? as of late

[Onassis]

People used to say that giant squid didn't exist and then the Japanese captured videos of it. The ocean is full of creatures we don't know about - we know more about the moon than our oceans !

[Culverin]

narwhal bacon

[drunkrussian]

pfft dude in river monsters catches 8 feet 400 pound fish with pirana teeth regularly. Nd thats juat freshwater...in the sea they have so much more to eat and grow its a knkwn fact that fish get huge down there
Posted via RS Mobile

[b92]

we've only discovered 2-3% of the worlds oceans so far...fact. We know more about space than our oceans.

[KVG]

Originally Posted by StylinRed

FALKOR NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO











what is this like the 5th unknown monster to wash up on shores? as of late

Agreed! Falkor for sure

[rocksforsale]

LOL falkor

but in reality, these stories come along once every so often its ridiculous
then after a few days everyone forgets about it and never hear any updates about them
my questions why do "they" (scientists and what not) take dna samples!!

[Culverin]

Cause any decent biologist can ID what animal it is by the skeleton. Only when they can't would they bother taking samples and paying for expensive testing.

[mercyboy]

Ocean is stretch on, even lakes and rivers...you never know when or where something might pop up and eat you!!!!

[tegz]

Originally Posted by b92

we've only discovered 2-3% of the worlds oceans so far...fact. We know more about space than our oceans.

Source? by 2-3% do you mean vertically?

[rocksforsale]

Originally Posted by Culverin

Cause any decent biologist can ID what animal it is by the skeleton. Only when they can't would they bother taking samples and paying for expensive testing.

youre telling me after the countless stories about monsters washed ashore, absolutely no "decent biologists" came out and followed up on what the creatures actually were?

[CRS]

Originally Posted by b92

we've only discovered 2-3% of the worlds oceans so far...fact. We know more about space than our oceans.

Yeah, I wouldn't go as far to say that.

Do you realize how much more vast space is compared to our ocean?

[Culverin]

Originally Posted by rocksforsale

youre telling me after the countless stories about monsters washed ashore, absolutely no "decent biologists" came out and followed up on what the creatures actually were?

You're talking about within the last few years? Most of those were figured out to be rotting whale carcasses, manatees or otters. Mostly in various stages of decay, not even so exotic as a "mutated" animal. Just plain gross and squishy cause it's been sitting in the sun too long.

[RacePace]

[optiblue]

Meeh, its possible some dinosaurs escaped extinction and continued to evolve. If I saw a t-Rex roaming around, i'd be the first to yell GODZILLA!!!!
Posted via RS Mobile

[GLOW]

Originally Posted by tegz

Source? by 2-3% do you mean vertically?

How much of the ocean have we explored?

regarding the space comment...