Strange Skull: Sturgeon?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 14th, 2010
Since I’m getting messages from all over about the Maine story of a “strange skull,” I better post about it before my emails get out-of-hand.
Yes, I know about reporter Bill Green’s story about a guy keeping a skull in his garage, and it leaking fluids. I too know that Green is getting excited about it. I’ve known about it for several days, and have found it to be decidedly uninteresting.
Why am I not excited? For starters, this skull has been in this guy’s garage for 15 years. Next, it reportedly was identified some time ago as probably a sturgeon’s. Green and the skull owner are pointing to holes in the skull as if they really might be eye openings, without any realization that known species’ skulls have sinus and other holes in normal animal skulls. It appears to be a big fish’s skull, er, like an Atlantic sturgeon’s.
New sturgeon skulls (above), varied species.
Salmon skull, old (above).
Take it to an aquarium, guys, if you want a firm answer. Why all the melodrama?
Ask yourself: Why now, after 15 years? Spring cleaning? Why is it interesting?
First, there was an “Oriental Yeti” that probably is a mangy civet, and next there appeared a Michigan “chupacabra” that probably is a mangy coyote. Now everyone is jumping up and down about a decaying skull that probably is a (not literally, but figuratively) mangy sturgeon!
Too bad this much attention wasn’t given to last week’s rather remarkable finding of a brand new species, the six-foot long Komodo dragon relative on Luzon!
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I wish we could see it better. In this photo it looks like an old baseball mitt.
I never understand why these things become stories before they’ve been examined and verified by experts. I”m with you on this one. Stop the melodrama and turn it over to the scientist types. Mystery solved.
Five minutes at a university or aquarium would solve this “mystery”
It’s fairly impressive for a fish, but I can’t see a reason to say anything other than “sturgeon skull.”
For years I’ve picked up very small (around 4 inches) skulls like this off New Jersey beaches. Sometimes some vertebra are still attached. I never knew what kind of fish they were from.
So, if nothing else, thanks for posting the sturgeon skull photos.
Bob
I personally agree with Loren Coleman’s assessment, but the comments from readers here are very disappointing.
It should be pointed out in fairness to Mr. Green and Mr. Richardson that the skull WAS taken to a museum in Augusta for identification. They were unable to identify it, and so it was taken to some other folks in Waterville. While the credentials of the people who did the analysis are unknown, it is erroneous and misleading to suggest that “5 minutes at a university or aquarium would solve this mystery” or that the skull hasn’t been viewed by “scientist types”.
The photo doesn’t show the skull very well, but if you would have clicked through and read the article or viewed Mr. Green’s report (which is linked in the posting above) you could have seen it much more clearly.
I think those of us here, more than anybody, should understand the importance of getting all the information before coming to a conclusion. Immediate and unfounded dismissal of a peculiar specimen is the thing we despise most of all, isn’t it?
Wildmaiden – fair enough.
Greetings All!
Came across a little more info on this. Here is video of the “skull” which now has the additional property of constantly secreting a “sticky brown liquid”.