Nessie Is Not A Plessie
Posted by: Nick Redfern on June 17th, 2014
“A couple of nights ago, I did a 10-minute transatlantic phone interview with a radio show in the UK. It was 1.00 AM here in Dallas, Texas, and 7.00 AM in England. And, as is generally the case when it comes to breakfast-time radio, they wanted to keep things bright, short, light and breezy, which was fine with me. The subject: the creatures of Loch Ness.
“When the Wiltshire-based host asked me to comment on the theory that the Nessies are plesiosaurs, I replied it was complete nonsense. For a second or so, there was a noticeable silence…”
That’s how my latest Mysterious Universe article starts…
About Nick Redfern
Punk music fan, Tennents Super and Carlsberg Special Brew beer fan, horror film fan, chocolate fan, like to wear black clothes, like to stay up late. Work as a writer.
I think the Nessie = plesiosaur debate has gone on ad nauseum on this site alone, so I’m not getting into it again.
However, as a side note, I do remember a time on Cryptomundo where we were discussing Nessie and all of the theories of what it might be. And I remember Loren Coleman having a factoid on the fact that in the European quarter, most people seemed to believe it was some sort of plesiosaur while in the U.S. people were more inclined to think it was a long necked pinniped of some sort. I always found that fascinating–namely that where you lived kind of defined your perceptions on the nature of Nessie.
As for plesiosaurs in general, the big thing is the fact that long necked something or others have been seen in Ness, not to mention many other lakes and even oceans. Enough so that I believe there is something to it–whether that means something evolved from a long neck swimming dino, or it’s something else, only time will tell.
I put very little stock in the fossil record because it is woefully incomplete–fossils do not form out of every dead critter or we’d have fossils everywhere. No, it takes a combination of conditions to be met in order for a fossil to form, and even a lot of the fossils we do have of creatures, sometimes we have only a tooth or a single bone.
There was an article that came out . . . two years ago maybe, talking about how they discovered plesiosaur fossils down in Antarctica, suggesting that plesiosaurs would have been able to survive in colder climates.
Personally, I haven’t settled on any one theory, but there is something out there with a long neck, whatever moniker you attach to it, either in Ness, other lakes and lochs or the oceans.
Here is an article about the discovery cryptokellie it referring to.
I believe the age is Late Cretaceous, and Vega Island, where the discovery was made was fairly close to it’s current position. The climate was likely a bit warmer, and I do not know what the exact climate conditions were in the area at the time.
My apologies, I had also replied to a post cryptokellie had replied to, and got my posts crossed. The article is about what springheeledjack mentioned.
If I recall, most of the early eyewitness accounts at Loch Ness, prior to the Surgeon’s Photo, simply describe a series of large black humps in/on the water. They do not mention a long neck. When that photo was later deemed a hoax (I know the jury is still out on whether it was), I thought that it made sense, since the picture didn’t really jibe with the prior observations.
We don’t know what type of animals are in Loch Ness but the animals we have seen in SF Bay definitely are NOT plesiosaurs.
Yeah, the Surgeon’s Photo has always bugged me too–while I know it was the “big one” when it came out, there was something about the shape and proportions that always bothered me. I have no clue whether it was bunk or not, but as was and has been reported by Loren Coleman and others, there was supposedly a “death bed” confession on it being a hoax, but later that same confession was just a hoax or infactual rumor.
To my knowledge, the head and neck being seen IS mentioned in only a small percentage of the sightings, but the ones where it is seen, the eye witnesses have a lot of detail to head movement and description, leading me to believe they weren’t just seeing a log rolling across the water or mistaking something mundane.
sfseaserpent–
I’ve seen that footage too and that was realllllly cool. Have you personally seen them in the Bay? I’ve only been to SF once and on that bay, but never saw anything out of the ordinary, I’m sorry to say.
I would guess whatever they are, are more closely related to the Cadborosaurus style critters that have been seen. I always go back to Heuvelmans, but he theorized multiple kinds of sea serpents and water creatures–which would not surprise me in the least. The oceans have more room to grow and hide large unknown creatures than any other environment.
Why on earth are people still discussing the Surgeon’s Photo as if there is a reasonable debate over whether or not it could be genuine? It has been conclusively debunked. It is an admitted hoax. An analysis at the site where it was filmed shows that it is too small, compared to the size of the waves, to be anything other than what it was confessed to be, a fabricated model a few feet long.
I keep saying this and all of the Nessie proponents keep avoiding the issue, but given the size of Loch Ness and the thousands of tourists out looking for a monster every day, how could there possibly be a population, sufficient in size to be a breeding population, of a large air- breathing animal that isn’t repeatedly seen on a daily or at least weekly basis? There would have to be dozens of these animals surfacing a few hundred times a day and no one is seeing them.
The Loch Ness Monster is a myth, nothing more.
SHJ, we don’t want to hijack this article by talking too much about our sightings in SF Bay. We just wanted to say since we do know what the animals look like that we have seen in SF Bay and they definitely are NOT plesiosaurs, it ‘s highly likely that the animals in Loch Ness are also NOT plesiosaurs but an unknown type of large marine animal. All of our sightings have been in SF Bay. You can google “Bill and Bob Clark” or “SF Sea Serpent” and you can get the address to our blog where we have given a detailed description of the animals we have seen in SF Bay.
NMRNG,
We have had a definitive sighting of a large unknown marine animal from only 20 yards away so we know that you are wrong.
Since a type of large unknown marine animal does exist in SF Bay then it is highly probable that some type of large unknown marine animal also exists in Loch Ness.