Photos of Russian Plesiosaur
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on August 28th, 2006
Two weeks ago, I reported here on Cryptomundo that there was a report that Russian hauled up a dead plesiosaur. Scott Corrales had forwarded the story to us here at Cryptomundo.
The story was taken with a grain of salt, as there were no corroborating photographs. Today, Cryptomundo reader 71_machone informed me that the photos were available on the website English Russia.
This is what is reported there with the photos.
This creature was found by Russian soldiers on Sakhalin shoreline. Sakhalin area is situated near to Japan, it’s the most eastern part of Russia, almost 5000 miles to East from Moscow (Russia is huge). People don’t know who is it. According to the bones and teeth – it is not a fish. According to its skeleton – it’s not a crocodile or alligator. It has a skin with hair or fur. It has been said that it was taken by Russian special services for in-depth studies, and we are lucky that people who encountered it first made those photos before it was brought away.
The story has changed somewhat, as it was originally reported that the carcass was found by Russian fishermen, whereas here it was reportedly found by Russian soldiers. The initial description mentioned that the carcass was nearly 7 meters long, approximately 21 feet. It doesn’t appear to be that length in these photos.
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The photographs to me do not look like a plesiosaur carcass. They do, however, look crocodilian in nature.
What do you, the readers of Cryptomundo, think?
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
I don’t think it’s a sturgeon. The skeletons of all sturgeon are primarily made of cartilage, which would not have survived such an apparently advanced stage of decomposition.
Those tail vertebrae certainly don’t look like anything fashioned from cartilage to me and don’t seem to resemble a sturgeon’s skeletal structure. The large rib cage would be extreme for a sturgeon as well.
It’s a good speculation, though.
Also, a sturgeon, being a bottom feeder, would not have such imposing looking teeth as these. This animal definitely looks adapted to an active carnivorous lifestyle.
You can get a good look at a sturgeon’s mouth and other information on this site.
Very different than this. I used to fish for sturgeon and they just don’t have a mouth that works this way.
Remember it is the sea in Russia. From the information I have researched there has been fisherman and submarines who have encountered strange looking marine animals that they can’t identify with the sea animals presently living in the oceans. Some say they look prehistoric like.
I sure would like it to be some type of prehistoric creature. I just am not ready to discount any of the other possible explanations just yet. This would certainly be very exciting if it turned out to be more than just a whale.
Thanks for the intellectual analysis of my remark, gentlemen, but the suggestion that it was a sturgeon was intended as sarcasm.
haha! I kind of figured that JacinB. I was going to insist that it was a space alien too, but I thought my joke would get picked apart too. Very funny!
I’m new to this site, so it’s hard for me to tell sometimes when people are being serious or sarcastic. Sorry. I bet you learned more than you ever needed to know about sturgeons on that site though!
I have to agree, looks like a croc or a gator. More like a croc because of the narrow, not rounded, nose. I also do not see any hair, as reported.
“Tail tapers to a point unlike whales and dolphins.”
On the contrary, that’s exactly what you’d see on a whale that’s as decayed as this carcass. The flukes have no bones, so the tail of a cetacean skeleton tapers to a point.
I was hoping it would be a Steller’s sea cow, but the skull is totally wrong for a nose breather (of any kind).
It’d be so cool if they weren’t extinct.
It’s a cetacean – the notch in the upper jaw pegs it as a beluga.
typetive-
It’s a cetacean – the notch in the upper jaw pegs it as a beluga.
Can you be sure? In the picture titled “monster8” when you hold the pointer over it there appears to be two notches in the upper jaw. The beluga skull pictured in the more recent thread only had one notch in the upper jaw. Do you think the second notch is from trauma rather than a natural feature of the skull?
I hope they were able to obtain useable DNA just to be sure of the identification.
I think all that stuff stuck to it is decomposing skin and blubber, not seaweed. It probably smells something fierce and that’s why they didn’t remove it immediately. I hope they did later on, because seeing more of the body would give more clues to its possible origin. Some people have suggested it is possibly reptilian. I was wondering how cold those waters get and would they be habitable to a large dinosaur like creature? What kind of temperatures were prehistoric whales assimilated to? Sure they could have evolved, but still. I’m trying to keep my mind open to all possibilities here.
Hmmmm, well I’ll definitely have to look at these closer, but its teeth look mammalian (definitely not shark teeth).
Honestly it almost reminded me of teeth I’ve seen in horse skulls, especilly in monster8.jpg, except that the rest of the skull is much too flat, especially when considereing monster10.jpg where you can really see the flatness of the snout.
I’m not 100% convinced that this couldn’t be an assemblage of some sort, but honestly, the first thing it reminded me of when I saw it there were pictures of a zeuglodon skeleton in a long-lost “ancient animals” book from my childhood.
I won’t be surprised if it turns out to be some known whale instead of an extant basilosaur, but worth checking into. I hope the skin wasn’t in such a bad state they can’t get DNA.
While the beluga skull is very close it doesn’t appear to me to be an exact match. I do think this is some sort of beaked whale though, possibly not a beluga but still a beaked whale.
Whale is the most apparent diagnosis here. I wonder what they ended up doing with this carcass. Is it still being studied? Those DNA tests come through yet? Or even drawings of DNA samples? Please keep us posted on this story!
I am with the rather overwhelming majority in shouting WHALE! However, considering that large plesiosaurids can hide underwater for hours, they could go undiscovered, but not disguised as a BELUGA WHALE!
In fact we have no idea how long plesiosaurs actually stayed underwater, furthermore this skull has no similarities to those of a plesiosaur (have you ever seen one?), but it matches perfectly those of a beluga whale, both in anatomy and actual size.
Look at the first picture. See the hoof on the right? Looks to me like a horse that’s been dead for a time. Possibly it is mixed up with parts of other animals for the length.
To me, it’s a horse.
There is no hoof. Have you ever looked at the skull of a horse?
After all the last comments are not that old… so… if you search for Beluga skulls in picture view you will see that the skull IS from a Beluga. The breach at the teeth is found at several Beluga skulls, too.
Basking Shark, case closed.
Most definitely a beluga whale. I checked the photo link from sunny and it just has to. I mean what else could it be?
It can’t be a plesiosaur, because plesiosaurs have two sets of ribs and I only see one pair.
Well, I too have posted my first comment because of these pictures.
It has the head of a dinosaur, the body of a sea serpent, a tail that is dragon-like and almost pointed. It truly is cool to look at, however, I would have shown the eye sockets. Most of you are saying it looks like a whale, there are a lizard like “fan” on it’s back. There is no creature I have found that has that feature but a Mososaur. What I would like to know is when these things are found, where are they taken and what is done with them, and why do I not find out what the results are? If there is a dino cool, if it’s a species that happens to be a gator that accidentally mated with some fish, then whatever! I still want to freakin’ know!
Besides, earthquakes and such could knock the fossil loose and send it ashore! If it’s by Russia, the water would be cold enough to retard the decaying process.
Geeze, this stuff fascinates me!
They found my pet. OH SHI-