Selections from ‘The Drake Manuscript’

The Histoire Naturelle des Indes, Natural History of The Indies, contains a collection of captioned water colour paintings of the Caribbean including 199 images of plants, animals, birds, fish, shells, Indian life, activities of the Spaniards and geographical sites with pages bound in 18th century blue morocco and was created sometime in the 1590’s.  It is one of the earliest illustrated records of European contact with the Americas. Also known by its informal title, The Drake Manuscript, it was donated to the Morgan Pier Pont Library in the USA in 1983, who after many years of study graciously produced a full color facsimile published in 1996 that was subsequently shared online.

Dale Drinnon over at Frontiers of Zoology found the full colour facsimile posting and noted some items of a Cryptozoological interest stating: “I did not include all the text or photos from the original site but enough to give the general degree of accuracy and the flavour of the original document, and the most important entry last.” (Syd’s Comment: Dale’s notations are marked “DD” and he has given me permission to repost here.):

Taken as a whole the images are an interesting mixture. The drawings of plants and animals are presented in a sort of cold practical manner, removed from their natural surroundings, with captions that read almost like a sales catalog, listing the virtues and drawbacks of each.  The drawings of the indigenous peoples themselves on the other hand are altogether warmer and seem to serve no greater purpose than curiosity.

[It seems to be some other very large ray or skate, Since there is at least a hint of some sort of enormous Cryptid skate or guitar-fish in the Caribbean, said to have a shark’s tail, this could be a representation of it-DD]

[If that eel is as big as a sawfish or a crocodile, that is no ordinary eel, it is a Megaconger-DD]

[Although the intention may have been to show a 3-toed sloth, the nearest creature with a tail like it was a Ground Sloth and this just might be documentation of a late-surviving Ground Sloth done by the error of mixing the two things up. This could be a “Su Monster” in tree-climbing mode-DD]

{Heads up to Jon Downes, this might be the West Indian Porcupine mistaken for the Chupacabras in the early 1990s reports! This also represents some unknown species of ground-dwelling monkey parallel to a rhesus monkey-DD]

[Another control entry, a man-eating shark. Incidentally, the name “Shark” is from the Mayan (Xoc) and circulated among the Pirates of the Caribbean-DD]

Leaving off the sort of turban of leaves and sticks the creature is wearing, we have what is very likely the earliest depiction of a Didi on record and also very likely one of the best and most straightforeward depictions of the Wildman type, from any time, from anywhere in South America. As mentioned in the earlier blog posting under Maricoxi, for the most part most of the South American “Abominable Snowmen” seem to be of the one type which Ivan Sanderson called Neanderthaloid in his review of the Maricoxi proper, in the scientific journal Genus.

Concerning the images themselves it amazes me to look at them in the artistic context of their time, because though I undoubtedly find them beautiful, when I remind myself that they were created in the 1590’s, and that at that same moment El Greco, Rubens, and Caravaggio were all active… well it’s surprising. Thought of in those terms it’s a wonder these weren’t made by the “Indians” themselves.

-Best Wishes, Dale D.

Source Credit(s): The original post is at thenonist.com/index.php/thenonist/permalink/histoire_naturelle_des_indes/ and Dale Drinnon’s post is at frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2012/03/selections-from-drake-manuscript.html

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Pinatubo Monster - A Volcano Lake Serpent?

In 2002, reports came out of the Philippines from Filipino villagers which told of five “huge, black creatures” swimming in the Tikis River, near the former mining village of Buhawen, scaring the  Aeta families, who claimed that the large serpent-like creatures were making life dreadful for the locals.

The very first sighting of a Pinatubo Monster was the previous November when a young boy playing in the river noticed what he initially thought were logs floating in the water. Once he approached it to play with it, the serpent-like creature showed its true form, which caught the boy by surprise and thus, he gave out a loud shriek. This scream attracted other Aetas but when they got to the boy, the creature had swam away, bothered by the screaming.
 
But in January 12, 2003 there were a multitude of eyewitness accounts of seeing the serpent-like creature in the river basin.

Filipino villagers then appealed for scientists to help explain the large unidentified creatures seen in the Tikis river. Five of the mysterious black creatures have been spotted in the river in Bhawen since November. This baffled the Aeta tribe who live there because there is no account of such creatures in their oral history.

Dubbed the Pinatubo Monsters, they are believed to be 7ft long and 3ft wide. Children have been ordered not to bathe in the river and fishing has also been banned in case the creatures are dangerous. They have never been seen in full form, but the elongated outlines could be seen when the wind blows over the river and ripples are made in the water. They never produced any sound at daytime or night.

Joel Serrano, a village councilman, told The Philippine Daily Inquirer: “We don’t know if they are fishes or snakes or eels because they never show their heads or tails.” He is also worried what effect the ban on fishing will have on the village, adding: “Frogs are our only source of protein.”Villager Alfredo Banos said: “The children are afraid. When they come here to view those creatures, they wonder what those things really are. We don’t have answers to their questions.”

The strange creatures were also seen swimming in the river below Labuan, which is enclosed by tall, thick bushes. Since the monsters’ heads and tails were not seen, no one could venture what these locally named “Pinatubo Monsters” could be.

The call of the councilmen was answered by the Bureau of Fisheries & Aquatic Resources (BFAR) regional director, Remedios Ongtangco. Ongtangco chose 43 year-old Nelson Bien — who had already rescued the residents of Luzon’s Nueva Ecija province from an extraordinary 12-foot long eel — for the job.

Bien, who served as the chief of the fisheries resources management division of the BFAR in Central Luzon, arrived in Labuan less than a week later.  Upon his arrival, the community’s tribal leaders immediately escorted the scientist to the Tikis River. After a cursory glance through a pair of binoculars, through which, according to most reports, he saw nothing, Bien wasted no time in concluding that — based soley upon the Aetas’ accounts — the phenomenon in question was most likely a school of the relatively common fish known as tilapia, who had probably congregated in groups of 500 or more.

The accounts all seem to end on this note, giving skeptics yet another excuse to practice their patented condescending smirk, but only a blithering fool would assume that an entire community — who have for generations lived on the banks of the Tikis and whose primary sources of nourishment came from the River — would confuse a school of relatively small (not to mention well known) pan fish for a quintet of 7-foot long, 3-feet wide, inky black, serpentine creatures.

Some researchers have suggested that the creatures may be a mutation spawned by the massive mercury levels said to be in the river. Whatever the origin of these beasts actually turns out to be, the fact remains that the Aeta villagers continue to fear the serpentine monsters of the Tikis River.

Interestingly enough, Lake Pinatubo was formed after Mount Pinatubo erupted on June 15, 1991. Mount Pinatubo being located near the boundaries of Pampanga, Tarlac and Zambales provinces in the Philippines offer a summit crater lake that is the deepest lake in the country at 800 m (2,600 ft) deep.

Did the eruption have anything to do with the reports of huge, serpent-like creatures seen after it’s wake, or does the fact that they were seen near a former mining village where mercury levels could be so high as to have created a mutation be relevant?

On September 24, 2008, Destination Truth aired an episode where Josh Gates and company searched for the Pinatubo Monster and discovered that changes in the river and lake may have changed the schooling habits and ecology for any creatures in the lake.

Whatever these creatures are, it has been made clear by the Aeta that these animals are unlike any eel, fish or snake that they are familiar with, and as far as we know, no other scientists have since volunteered to go further investigate.

Source Credit(s): unknown-creatures.com/pinatubo-monster.html, ananova.com/news/story/sm_494687.html, americanmonsters.com/site/2009/12/pinatubo-monsters-philippine-islands, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Pinatubo

Pinatubo Monsters illustration © 2012, Syfy, Destination Truth

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Pressie the Lake Superior Sea Serpent

Lake Superior or Gitchigumi (meaning Great Water or Great Lake) is a fresh water lake. It is 1,333 feet deep in places , with an average water temperature of 34 degrees F and is 350 miles long and up to 160 miles wide in parts. The lake is almost an inland sea. It is said to house a lake serpent, Pressie, named after the Presque Isle River where one of the best sightings occurred .


Mouth of the Presque Isle River at Lake Superior

The native indigenous people called the serpent Mishipishu and it is seen in pictographs at various shoreline sites, either as a spiky cat-like creature or as a serpent. Modern sightings cite a serpent type creature up to 75 feet long with a horse-like head on a longish neck and a bilobate (whale-type) tail, and described as dark green to black in colour. The reported sightings go back centuries, here is a selection of the most well known:

In September 1894, about halfway between Whitefish Point and Copper Harbor, Michigan, the crews of two steamers observed a strange creature undulating along in the twilight, its back protruding 6 to 8 feet out of the water.

In July 1895, three members of a steamer crew observed a “hideous creature” off Whitefish Point which seemed at times to be deliberately pacing their ship. They claimed it had a 15 foot neck and a jaw a foot wide.

In 1897 near Duluth (MN), a Detroit man fell overboard when his yacht struck a rock. He was then attacked by a huge serpent which he said tried to constrict him in the manner of a large snake. His three shipmates also saw the beast.

In the 1930’s, a serpent, swimming along at about 9 miles per hour, was observed by two fisherman at Pictured Rocks, Munising, Michigan. The animal created a strong wake as it passed the shore.

In the 1960’s, a family watched a huge animal, alternately showing humps and stretching out straight, swim upriver past the North coast of Sugar Island Neither head nor tail was visible and they said it resembled a log when stretched out straight.

Memorial Day weekend in 1977, North of Ironwood , hiker Randy Braun snapped a photo of something which he suspects was a giant serpent swimming in the waters of the lake near the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. Braun said it undulated in the water like a serpent. The snapshot he took of the beast shows a blurry object in the water. (Top Photo) The photo indicates a serpent like creature with a horse-like head on a long neck and an undefined tail.



Randy Braun’s sketch

In the summer of 1981 in Munising, four children and teenagers, all siblings, observed a serpent showing 3-5 humps rising 1-2 feet out of the water (the slower it went the higher the humps). As it came within about 20 yards of the private beach, one of the children ran away crying and the animal headed away showing lower humps.

In the middle 1990’s, during the summer, fishermen watched in horror as a large aquatic animal pulled a wading buck deer under (leaving only it’s severed head) near Point Iroquois, Michigan.

All the photographic evidence is as usual grainy or blurry , but that is par for the course and lets face it, anyone’s hand would shake if they thought they saw a monster. So could it be a giant eel? It seems the most likely or a giant water snake. A sturgeon, the usual explanation seems less likely given the descriptions. What we need is a video or a carcass to turn up. Certainly in a lake that big there are plenty of places to hide!

Here is Randy Braun’s written account of the incident with other information:

Lake Superior Monster

“On Memorial Day Weekend in 1977 I was camping at Presque Isle campground north of Ironwood, Michigan, with a friend. I don’t remember if it was Saturday or Sunday but it was a beautiful morning and Lake Superior was like glass. Visibility was remarkable when looking out across the Lake, and distant land was visible. There’s a trail that leads east from the campground which crosses the Presque Isle River that I was navigating, however, the bugs were unbearable, and I headed north towards the lake hoping that walking along the beach would be more comfortable.

When I reached the tree line there was the beach but about one hundred feet below me. The slope leading to the beach was close to a 45 degree angle with short dead trees protruding from the moss covered rock, and come to find out also very slippery. It still amazes me to this day how I was able to control my slide and with a full backpack. I sheared off some of the scrub trees on the way down. Then again I was young and experienced having had extensive background in forestry and working in Idaho and Montana. I was twenty-six years old then and now I am fourty-eight. The beach was maybe thirty feet from the waters edge to the the slippery slope and as I continued to walk east sometimes no beach at all. Instead there was water with tangled lake debris amid dead standing trees. The water was knee deep to waist deep but difficult to get through, and as I think about it I’m glad “it” wasn’t lurking in there. After crossing through a couple of these beach barriers it was clear beach as far east as I could see, and I stopped by a 3’x3’ boulder, sat, and began to east lunch.

When I looked straight out to open water I saw two very distinct dark bumps which seemed to be separated by just a few feet. First, one bump would go underwater then the next bump would do the same, but only after the first one surfaced. I had a 20x spotting scope with me and couldn’t quite make out what they were. Then they began to move east and to my left, one bump going under and then the other, but one bump always stayed on top of the water while the other submerged.

It became frightfully apparent to me that this object was close to one thousand feet out and as it gained speed I realized there was a third smaller bump, and that the object was undulating. It moved very rapidly “VERY RAPIDLY” to the east and quartered towards and nearly up to the shore. The now obviously living thing stopped maybe several hundred feet from me and began moving and weaving around large boulders that were in the water, and directly towards me. IT WAS BIG and resembled an anaconda with the girth of a Volkswagen. Don’t laugh it wasn’t funny.

There was no where to go for me because of the slippery slope and the water barriers so I jumped behind the boulder and grabbed by 35mm Yashica. As it moved towards me it slowed down considerably but was making a noticeable wake. It was strangely quiet while it snaked towards me and stopped dead in the water, right in front of me. IT WAS BIG! I steadied my camera on top of the rock and fired one picture but was afraid to move after that. The thing sat there for about thirty seconds with its huge horse shaped head and large dark left eye staring at me. On the nose was a visible catfish type whisker, maybe two feet in length and wiggling.

I don’t talk to many people about it and have the original negative which I used to make an 8x10. The picture is high quality and every-thing plus more makes it quite a conversational piece. Incidentally a Doctor Reines from the State University of New York in Plattsburgh, New York has an 8x10 I’ve sent some twenty years ago. The picture is copyrighted so he didn’t pursue purchasing the photo, at least that’s what I think. At the time of the incident I lived in northern Illinois but now ironically I live in Michigan and only several miles from Lake Superior.

Two summers ago and not far from where I live, now, recreational fisherman observed a large something bite a buck deer in half while it was wading in the water near Sault Ste. Marie. An Indian friend of mine has the newspaper article.

May I also add that seeing these creatures is in Indian legend. Legend has it that Indians observed the creature do the same thing I did, and legend further adds that when it stops in the water sometime gulls mistake it for a log and land on its nose. You can guess what happened to the gull.

Furthermore and finally, people disappear near Presque Isle River occasionally and are never found. It’s attributed to the undertow (???). I don’t swim in any deep water lake anymore and occasionally have nightmares of being consumed by the thing I saw.”

Sources: cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2009/07/pressie-lake-superior-serpent.html, monstertracker.com/article/lake-superior-monster

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What is the Scariest Cryptid You’d Never Want to Meet?

NEVER BOTHER A BEITHER!

When is an eel not just an eel? When it is a mysterious Scottish snake, or the Loch Ness monster, or a bottled sea serpent, or a giant blue worm from India, or…

An Excerpt from The Beasts that Hide from Man (Chapter 10 “Slithery Surprises”) by Karl P.N. Shuker

Monstrous eels far greater in size than any officially recorded by science have been offered at one time or another as a favoured identity for a wide range of cryptozoological creatures still awaiting formal discovery. Take, for instance, the beither.

One of Britain’s lesser-known mystery beasts, the beither is said to resemble a giant water snake, and reputedly inhabits the dark caves and waters of the Scottish Highlands’ more remote, secluded areas. A correspondent in the English magazine Athene recalled meeting a fisherman near Inverness in 1975 who claimed that he and four others had once seen a beithir lying coiled in shallow water close to the edge of a deep gorge near Beaufort Castle, eventually vanishing from sight. They estimated it to have been “a good three paces or more” long, i.e. nine to ten feet.

Equally intriguing is the testimony of a Strathmore gamekeeper who alleged that his wife’s parents had spied beithirs moving on land during the 1930s at Loch a’ Mhuillidh, near Glen Strathfarrar and the mountain of Squrr na Lapaich. Could these elongate enigmas be over-sized (or over-estimated) specimens of the grass snake Natrix natrix, a species equally at home on land in the water? Or is it possible that they are unusually large eels, whose abilities to migrate considerable distances overland are well known?

Any contemplation of mysterious water beasts in Scotland leads inevitably to Nessie - the famously elusive monster of Loch Ness. And this too has been provisionally idenitifed by some zoological authorities, notably the late Dr. Maurice Burton, as a giant eel, possibly up to 30 feet in total length.  Normally, of course, the common European eel Anguilla anguilla does not exceed five to six feet, and the conger eel Conger conger seldom exceeds nine to ten feet.

Nevertheless, ichthyological researchers have revealed that growth in eels is more rapid in confined bodies of water (such as a loch), in water that is not subjected to seasonal temperature changes (a condition met with in the deeper portions of a deep lake, like Loch Ness), and is not uniform (some specimens grow much faster than others belonging to the same species).

Collectively, therefore, these factors support the possibility that abnormally large eels do indeed exist in Loch Ness. Also of significance is the fact that eels will sometimes swim on their side at or near the water surface, yielding the familiar humped profile described by Nessie eyewitnesses, and a 20-foot or 30-foot eel could certainly produce the sizeable wakes and other water disturbances often reported for this most celebrated of all aquatic monsters.

Even so, independent sightings of the beast seen in its entirely, i.e. on land, have repeatedly featured a creature possessing distinctive flipper-shaped limbs, a well-delineated neck, a burly body, and a long tail. This description is far removed indeed from that of any eel, but is strikingly reminiscent of a supposedly long-extinct type of aquatic reptile known as a plesiosaur - which remains the most popular identity among cryptozoologists for the Loch Ness monster. Yet even if Nessie is a plesiosaur, there is no reason why Loch Ness could not also harbour some extra-large eels. After all, any loch that can boast a volume of roughly 263 billion cubic feet must surely have room enough for more than one monster!

Immense landlocked eels supposedly inhabit a number of deep pools in the Mascarene island of Reunion, near Mauritius. In a letter to The Field (February 10, 1934) Courtenay Bennett recalled seeing in the 1890s a dead specimen that had been caught in one such pool, the Mara à Poule d’Eaux, and from which “steaks as thick as a man’s thigh were cut.”

Some cryptozoologists believe that certain extremely elongate sea monsters sporadically reported over the years may comprise a hitherto-undiscovered species of gigantic eel. Indeed, it has even been given a name, the super-eel - and for many years, scientists were convinced that a young super-eel had actually been captured and preserved.

The curious case of the bottled-sea serpent began on January 31, 1930, when the Danish research vessel Dana caught a truly extraordinary juvenile eel (leptocephalus) at a depth of about 900 feet, south of the Cape of Good Hope. What made this specimen so astonishing was its size. In contrast to the common eel’s leptocephalus, which is no more than three inches long (even the conger eel’s is only four inches long) this colossal leptocephalus measured six feet, one a half inches!

Bearing in mind that during its metamorphosis from leptocephalus to adult, the common eel becomes 18 times longer (and the conger eel can become as much as 30 times longer), bemused ichthyologists estimated that the still-unknown adult version of the mysterious species could be anything between 108 and 180 feet long! A vertible super-eel in every sense. Accordingly this highly significant leptocephalus was duly preserved in alcohol, and is now housed within Copenhagen University’s Zoologicial Museum. Meanwhile, the zoological world anxiously awaited the capture of an adult super-eel.

Alas, it was not to be. In 1970, Miami University ichthyologist Dr. David G. Smith conclusively identified the giant leptocephalus’s species as a spiny eel or notacanthid. Despite their name, spiny eels are not true eels; moreover, unlike true eels, which undergo most of their growth during metamorphosis, spiny eels
undergo most of theirs prior to metamorphosis. Consequently, had it lived and transformed into an adult, the six-foot-long Dana leptophalus would not have greatly increased in size-thus sweeping aside earlier speculations that it could have become a 100-foot-plus monster adult eel.

Having said that, it is by no means impossible that a gigantic species of true eel does indeed await formal scientific discovery; the ocean depths are far too immense for even the most conservative opinion to dismiss such a prospect out of hand. At present, however, there is only tantalizing anecdotal evidence for the existence of such creatures.

And what can be said about the giant worm-like eels (or eel-like worms?) with vivid blue bodies that reputedly lurk amid the dank riverbed ooze of the Ganges? This, at least, is what Aelian, Ctesias, Solinus and a number of other celebrated scholars from the ancient world once claimed. According to Solinus, these amazing creatures were 30 feet long, but their dimensions grew ever greater with repeated re-tellings by subsequent writers until they eventually attained sufficient stature to emerge from their muddy hideaways at night and devour unwary camels and cattle! Not suprisingly, this incredible species of eel has never been brought to scientific attention - a classic example, presumably, of the one that got away!

Credit to Karl P.N. Shuker, The Beasts that Hide from Man

For more intriguing tales of mysterious, mythical and extraordinary animals, read The Beasts That Hide from Man: Seeking the World’s Last Undiscovered Animals by Karl P.N. Shuker

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TULLIMONSTRUM, THE TULLY MONSTER

Pioneering Nessie investigator and old school monster-hunter, F.W. “Ted” Holiday, wrote a book in 1968 entitled: “The Great Orm of Loch Ness.”

At the conclusion of his tome, Holiday surmised that the monster in Loch Ness was not the only example of a relic Tullimonstrum skulking around Europe, but that the legends of huge dragons and other bizarre aquatic mysteries, which had plagued the continent for centuries, were most like due to encounters with this spineless beast.

In his book Holiday reports:

“During April 1965 there was a period of heavy rain lasting several days. The loch rose and the River Ness was in spate. A salesman, Mr. George McGill, had business in the YMCA building on Bank St. in Inverness. At 11:45 a.m. the rain was so heavy that Mr. McGill stood in the doorway with a friend watching it. Mr. McGill wrote to me [Holiday]: “Just as we got to the door I looked across the River Ness. What I saw was a large, thick, ridged neck looping out of the water. The height of the neck above the water would be about four feet six inches and it was about eight inches in diameter. There was a disturbance where the neck re-entered the water and another disturbance some distance to the rear. What it was I cannot say, but it was not a fish. It was very unusual and I have never seen anything like it before. I shall try to draw what I saw.”

Holiday does not reproduce Mr. McGill’s drawing in the book, but he reports that it shows, “What appears to be the neck of a smallish Orm which seems to be going down-river on the flood water.”

Finally, an incident that may support the possibility of an animal trying to pass through the canal locks. In 1900 (the exact date is uncertain) an odd animal was reportedly found at the bottom of Corpach Lock on the Caledonian Canal. It was assumed to have come from the loch, although it could just as easily have been trying to get into the loch. To my knowledge, this incident was first reported in print by F.W. Holiday in The Great Orm of Loch Ness . It is also mentioned by Peter Costello in In Search of Lake Monsters. The two versions of the incident differ in that Holiday states that the animal was killed by the workmen who found it, while Costello contends that it was discovered dead by workmen who were engaged in clearing out the lock. Both reports state that the animal resembled a large eel and both describe it as having a “mane.” This incident is not mentioned in Ulrich Magin’s comprehensive listing of recorded sightings, which means that it was not picked-up by the contemporary local papers. According to Fortean Times publisher Mike Dash, the story my have been originally reported to Dom Cyril Dieckhoff, a highland Catholic priest in the 1930s who had a great interest in lake monsters, by one of his correspondents.

When these reports are considered in relation to the veritable wealth of recorded long-neck sightings in the coastal waters of the British Isles it seems reasonable to suggest that the animals in question are capable, under the proper circumstances and at an early stage of development, of making their way into Loch Ness from the open ocean. It would be logical to assume that they would be capable of entering other lochs as well where a navigable link to the sea exists.

Throughout the sliver in the geological record, known as the Pennsylvanian period, which began approximately 320 million years ago and ended approximately 34 million years later, vast low-lying coastal swamps and deltas covered much of West Virginia and the eastern and Midwestern United States, as well as large portions Europe.

During this era there existed a unique carnivorous invertebrate known as Tullimonstrum gregarium, which is speculated to be a distant relative of both the octopus and the common garden slug.
 
This soft bodied creature, of unknown taxonomic standing, is a major candidate for many lake monsters. Everything from Nessie to ogopogo has been explained with the tulimonstrum theory.



Described as having two, huge eyes - attached to stalks - protruding from either side of its body (mistaken for flippers?), a long proboscis with a mouth on the end  (looks sort like a head and neck…), two large prodigious posterior fins and a third broad tail fin, it is no wonder that this fossilized relic has been associated with the legends of so many lake cryptids, from Loch Ness Monster to Mussie to El Cuero.

At the end of its proboscis mouth was a “jaw” that contained eight small, sharp teeth. There is no evidence that the throat went down the proboscis. It seems more likely that the proboscis was a muscular organ used to pass food to the mouth. Near the middle of the body was a transverse bar that passed through the body. The bar had swellings on the end. These may have been the animal’s sensory organs.

Overall, if it were to attain an emmense size it would be the perfect lake monster. Who’s to say a modern descendent of Tullimonstrum isn’t responsible for such lake monsters?

One theory, which has been proposed more than a few fortean researchers, is that this animal may have survived into the 21st century, living in lakes and rivers, and rearing its head every now and again just to give the tourists a good scare.

According to those who support this hypothesis, the Tullimonstrum’s proboscis might be mistaken for the plesiosauride head and neck so often reported by eyewitnesses.

They further claim that the submarine shape of the Tullimonstrum’s body, along with its large flippers, only serve to complete this picture of the prototypical Lake-Monster.

While some scientists have speculated that it is related to snails and other molluscs, it is not really known to what other animals the Tully Monster is truly related.



However, to say that paleontologists can’t make heads or tails of the Tully Monster would be untrue. The claw-tipped proboscis on the front end and the arrow-shaped rear fins at the posterior end can be easily identified in complete specimens. Beyond that, though, this 300 million year old invertebrate remains one of the most vexing fossil species ever found.

Tully Monsters first came to the attention of paleontologists in 1958. While looking for fossils among the mining pits of northeastern Illinois, collector Francis Tully stumbled across an assemblage of marine organisms unlike any found elsewhere in the area. Especially perplexing were six-inch, worm-like impressions found inside the numerous concretions that littered the pits. Soon other amateur fossil hunters began finding them, too, and these strange creatures got their popular name in honor of their discoverer.

When presented with some of these specimens by Tully, the professional paleontologists at Chicago’s Field Museum were puzzled. The Tully Monsters did not correspond to any other known animal. In his 1966 description of these fossils, Field Museum scientist Eugene Richardson gave the animal a proper scientific title – Tullimonstrum gregarium, honoring its discoverer, enigmatic nature, and the sheer number of individuals that had been discovered – but he refrained from giving it a precise place in the tree of life. “While this obscure but plentiful animal is being studied,” Richardson wrote, “I prefer not to assign it to a phylum.”

Richardson published a more complete description of the beasts three years later with colleague Ralph Gordon Johnson. They still were not certain what it was. “There is no compelling reason to assign Tullimonstrum to any of the known phyla,” they wrote, concluding that “It could be imagined as an aberrant member of one of several phyla but the critical evidence is not available.” Nevertheless, examination of scores of specimens allowed the paleontologists to flesh out the anatomy of the monster.

The chief difficulty with studying the Tully Monsters was the fact that all the specimens were only impressions of the soft-bodied animals. No exoskeletons, no chitin plates, and no hard parts were left behind. A few specimens that had begun to decay before they were buried allowed a blurry look at the organs of the Tully Monsters, but Johnson and Richardson were mostly restricted to studying the external anatomy.

As reconstructed by Richardson and Johnson, the Tully Monsters had segmented, semi-cylindrical bodies marked by three remarkable external traits. At the posterior end of the animal were two triangular tail fins arranged like the undulating side fins of squid. On the opposite end, however, Tully Monsters had two peculiar sensory organs. Sticking out of the animal’s head was a flexible schnozzle tipped in a minutely-spiked grasping claw, and further back on the head were two stalks with cup-like depressions. An exquisite specimen in which the mineral pyrite preserved the form of these organs showed that these flexible stalks probably supported the eyes. Slight variations seen among various specimens suggested that eye stalks could be angled forward or backward for different views.

Richardson and Johnson were also able to say a little about the prehistoric habitat of the Tully Monsters. The marine invertebrates lived in the warm coastal waters of a 300 million year old ocean. Fossils of jellyfish, annelid worms, and sea cucumbers were found in the same deposits, but larger creatures swam there, too. “A few [Tully monster specimens] terminate abruptly,” the scientists wrote, “a portion of the trunk having been torn away.” Ancient sharks seemed to be the most likely culprits, especially since the fish left behind fossil feces right alongside the invertebrate body fossils.

Over four decades later, we don’t know much more about the Tully Monsters. Merrill Foster, in his 1979 reassessment of the fossils, considered Tully Monsters to be related to the subgroup of molluscs that contains conches, whelks, and limpets. A more recent 2005 paper hinted that the Tully Monsters might instead be related to the Cambrian invertebrate Vetustovermis, itself a problematic fossil of uncertain affinities. As strange as they are though, there is something familiar about the Tully Monsters. Although separated by about 200 million years, the Tully Monsters show a general similarity to the nozzle-faced Cambrian creature Opabinia regalis. Both had stalked eyes, a flexible proboscis tipped with a grasping appendage, and moved by way of flexible fins on the sides of their bodies. (The fact that the proboscis of the Tully Monsters did not have a mouth or throat – and was probably used to move food to the mouth as in Opabinia – is another clue worth considering.) Might the Tully Monsters be some long-lived cousin of Opabinia, suggesting an as-yet-undiscovered trail of trunked invertebrates? Maybe, maybe not. As ever, we need more fossils.

Other investigators have associated this beast with the nefarious Lindworms.
In 1989 Tullimonstrum gregarium was officially designated the State Fossil of Illinois

sources: wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/tullys-mystery-monster/
wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullimonstrum

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One monster’s Utopia

Norma Stewart says there are too many coincidences and sightings to deny that a serpent-like creature keeps returning to the lake

It’s a perfect summer scene at Lake Utopia’s Canal Beach on the outskirts of St. George.

Kids splash away the heat while sun lovers bake on beds of white sand. Down the beach, a party barge and a speedboat break the calm surface of one of the world’s great, natural deep-water canals, which links the lake to the Magaguadavic River. From there it flows on through St. George to Passamaquoddy Bay and the sea beyond.

Dipping a toe in the cool water, Norma Stewart easily conjures images of a deep secret in the lake’s darkest waters. Somewhere down there a creature stirs, its huge, serpent body glides in rhythmic ripples like a living wave. After five years at sea, the Lake Utopia sea monster is on the move. It is coming home.

Stewart, a cryptozoologist, or student of unknown creatures, is the leading authority on the Lake Utopia sea monster.

“If you look at the pattern, you’re looking at about every three to five years there will be a sighting,” Stewart said.

The last sighting reported to the papers was in 1996. The last one reported to Stewart was in 2000.

Most people who have seen Utopia’s mysterious creature keep their stories quiet for fear that naysayers will chalk up strange tales to demon rum or an otherwise addled mind, Stewart said.

“I have people that have contacted me with their stories and they don’t go to the papers,” Stewart said.

“People often times won’t go public but they will contact someone like me.”

They do it for peace of mind. They want to tell Stewart what they saw and they want her to tell them they aren’t crazy.

“They’ve remembered every detail. It might have happened when they were a kid or it might have happened when they were an adult but they didn’t tell anybody for 10 years,” Stewart said.

One of her favourite reports, which she’s keeping anonymous, came via a long-distance phone call from a businessman who tracked Stewart down to share his story. He used to fish at Lake Utopia every year, she said, and the last time he was there he was canoeing near dusk when he bumped a log. He pushed off and the log rolled. A few paddles later, he hit the log again. He pushed himself off again and learned he wasn’t pushing a log.

“It didn’t just roll. It moved upward and got one of the humps coming up. It almost swamped his canoe and then it just swam away,” Stewart said.

He told his wife about it but they agreed not to tell anyone else, until they learned about Stewart and her studies.

“People might think he was a loony tune so they didn’t tell anyone,” Stewart said.

She gets a lot of that.

“I’ve had enough credible people, in my own lifetime, come to me and tell me their experiences that I really don’t doubt that there is some creature,” Stewart said.

“And it’s not new to the area.”

Stewart has never seen the monster but she doesn’t waiver from her belief it exists. She’s heard too many stories (including one from her own son), noted too many coincidences and connections to write it off as folklore. Sceptics say they’ll believe it when they see it. Stewart has a different take.

“You see it when you believe it,” she said.

She’s been studying the monster for a quarter century and has firm ideas about what the creature is, and isn’t.

The monster is not a dinosaur with flippers, Stewart said.

“It is more serpentine and it is amphibious. It has lungs, it takes in air and can stay underwater for long periods of time.”

Other than a native legend about a monster chasing a canoe with jaws snapping and a stranger tale about a creature busting up through the lake’s ice, most reports describe a docile beast lazing and lolling in the late summer sun or floating in the evening calm water.

“It loves to bask. It loves to come up on a day like this and just roll in the water,” Stewart said.

“It’s never vicious either. It doesn’t attack people. I think it’s one of those ‘It’s more afraid of you than you are of it.’ “

She doesn’t hunt for the monster and says she isn’t trying to prove or disprove its existence.

“I’m just a collector of information,” she said.

“If you don’t want to believe it, don’t believe it.”

Stewart’s research into the Utopia monster started with a basic question: Was the legend simply brought to the New World from Europe? Is the creature a local adaptation of the Loch Ness story? She investigated Passamaquoddy native history and in it she found monster legends that pre-date the arrival of Europeans in the region.

She also learned that Lake Utopia is traditionally a mystical and magical place considered sacred to the Passamaquoddy. Its Porcupine Mountain was an ancient place of worship and there is a burial ground at the lake’s northern end.

“It’s a very sacred place and it was on their migratory path,” Stewart said.

Stewart grew up in St. George surrounded by sea monster tales.

“There was always talk around the kitchen table, especially in the summer time or in the fall and especially if someone did see it - didn’t tell the press maybe but saw it - and word got around,” she said.

After living in Hong Kong, Stewart came home and looked with new eyes at the monster stories and symbols around her, including the town’s crest - St. George slaying a dragon. She started seeing connections.

“From there, I just got curious,” she said.

As she gathered stories and examined legend, folklore, geography and biology, Stewart became increasingly convinced the Utopia monster is a real creature - or species. The chain of evidence connects in too many ways to be coincidence, she said.

The connections begin with the lake itself and the deep-water canal that carries its water to the Atlantic Ocean. In St. George, fresh water meets salt water. A sea serpent meets a lake. But why?

Stewart finds that answer in the river’s name. Magaguadavic River - a native word meaning River of Eels. Eels spawn at sea but return to their native lake, sort of like how salmon migrate but in reverse. The monster in Stewart’s mind is like an eel.

“I think it’s a species of animal and it migrates in the Atlantic just like the eels and it has its feeding grounds,” Stewart said. “It does its circle and every so-many years it comes back to Lake Utopia.”

Joe Nickell, a professional sceptic, investigated the monster in 1999 and wrote about it in Skeptical Inquirer magazine. He dismissed the legend and said so-called sightings are most likely logs, fish, eels or otters. He argued the lake couldn’t provide the food a monster, or herd of monsters, would require.

The migration theory eliminates the sceptic’s argument.

“It’s not at all possible that this creature lives in the lake for hundreds of years,” Stewart said.

That’s why she’s careful to call it the Lake Utopia sea monster, and not just a monster.

Another theory offered by sceptics is that people who claim to have seen the monster are actually seeing eels gathered into large balls for hibernation. There’s a belief these eel balls float to the lake’s surface in spring before they disperse.

“That’s true, that’s factual, but there aren’t very many sightings, if any, at that time of year,” Stewart said.

One of the most important sites in St. George is a postcard-perfect spot known as The Gorge. The water flowing over the falls here has powered industry throughout the town’s history - from sawmills and shipbuilding to a paper mill to a current hydroelectric station.

“The Gorge has always been the source of power,” Stewart said. “It’s interesting how it’s shaped this community.”

Carved out by the receding glaciers, The Gorge and its roaring falls deliver Lake Utopia’s fresh water into the estuary waters of the Magaguadavic Basin. But this water too has a secret that’s widely known to locals but hidden by the beauty of the rock and the waterfalls.



As Stewart looks out on the falls she describes a subterranean world of rocky tunnels that snake out from The Gorge through the town itself. There are legends the tunnels were escape routes used by natives and also by lovers fleeing religious persecution.

This network could also be a throughway for a sea serpent, a giant eel, returning to Lake Utopia from the Atlantic, Stewart said.

And, as if on cue to help Stewart connect the dots, a motorboat glides up into The Gorge from the basin. Two fishermen stop at a rocky outcrop. They’re emptying eel traps.

Stewart said she believes the famed Loch Ness Monster may travel in a similar pattern from ocean to lake. The two areas share similar geographical features and both lie between 45th and 50th parallels - an area around the globe that appears to be a beltway of sea creature sightings. There are 17 documented monsters sighted between those latitudes, including Ogopogo in British Columbia’s Lake Okanagan.

Another theory suggests the monster travels overland, most likely in the Breadalbane area of St. George, which is the flattest overland route between the sea and the lake. There is even a report from 1840 of a slimy trail.

A third possible migration route is through the Letang River.

But Stewart believes the most viable link is The Gorge, the tunnels and the canal.

“Like an eel or a salmon, it’s got a purpose. It knows where it’s going and it’s got a way to get there.”

Lake monsters are the stuff of legend and folklore from British Columbia to Newfoundland and all around the world. Perhaps it’s the love of a good mystery or a love for the unknown or unknowable that keeps these stories alive.

Asked if she’d like to see the monster mystery solved, Stewart said, “I’d love it.”

In 1997 she even offered a $1,000 reward for anyone who could produce video or photographic evidence of the monster. No one claimed the prize.

Or perhaps the stories remain alive because there really is an ancient species lurking out there in the depths, keeping its secrets for all but the lucky few who catch a glimpse of something they just can’t quite explain.

Lake Utopia monster sightings

While leading Lake Utopia Monster researcher Norma Stewart said most sightings are kept quiet, there have been several documented reports over the last century and a half.

1867 - Sawmill workers on the north shore of the lake say they saw something 30 feet (nine metres) long and 10 feet (three metres) wide thrashing in the lake. Similar reports are made in the following days.

1868 - A Saint Croix Courier reporter said he and other witnesses saw the monster.

1872 - A Dominion Gazette article on the monster said “dwellers of the lake, without exception, believe that a huge fish or serpent has a home in Utopia” and they’ve seen it basking like a pine log on the surface of the water.

1872 - Natives describe a fearful monster with a large head following their canoes, snapping its bloody jaws.

1872 - The Canadian Illustrated News reports on a hunting party setting out to catch the monster. They didn’t.

1891 - William Francis Ganong, the famous naturalist, records in his notebook a description of the monster provided by a lumberman who said he saw it 20 years prior. “It was dark red in colour, the part showing above the water was 20 feet long (about) and as big around as a small hogshead; it was much like a large eel.”

1969 - The Saint John Evening Times Globe reports on an interview with Mrs. Fred McKillop, of St. George, who said she saw a huge creature 18 years earlier. “It looked like a huge black rock … It moved up and down the lake, boiling and churning the water, making great waves,” she’s quoted as saying.

1982 - Sherman Hatt says he and family members saw a large creature that looked like a submarine with spray coming from both sides and a hump out of the water about 10 feet long.

“It was huge-huge,” he said. “Maybe there is an explanation but I cannot understand what it was.”

1996 - There are wide-spread reports about Roger and Lois Wilcox who were canoeing on the lake when they saw ripples break the mirror-like surface 100 metres from them. It was heading toward Cannonball Island - a common monster sighting spot, said Stewart. Wilcox, a retired military airman from St. George, describes it as 40 to 50 feet (12 to 15 metres) long, undulating upward, not sideways. He said he saw a hump come five feet out of the water. He questioned if it was a porpoise, eel or otter but, simply put, said, “I just don’t know what it was.”

If you don’t want to believe it, don’t believe it.

Story By Chuck Brown, July 23, 2005 

For further discussion of the Lake Utopia cryptids, see The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep

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