The Beasts that Hide from Man (34 page)

When considered collectively, features such these bristles (readily recalling the ceratotrichia—cartilaginous fibres—of shark fin rays), the lizard-like shape, vertical tail (characteristic of fish), lack of body bones, and smooth skin suggest a decomposing shark as a plausible identity. Yet the large pointed teeth argue against the traditional basking shark explanation in favor of one of the large carnivorous species. However, if Rankin’s estimate of its size was accurate, it must have been a veritable monster of a specimen—the world’s largest known species of carnivorous shark, the notorious great white shark
Carcharodon carcharias
, rarely exceeds 20 feet. If only some taxonomically significant portion of the Gourock sea serpent’s body could have been retained for formal examination, in particular its skull, a flipper, or at least some teeth. Instead, they have presumably been pounded ever deeper into the earth by the studs of a succession of soccer teams—oblivious to the cryptozoological treasure lying forgotten beneath their feet.

And finally: it would be quite unthinkable to end this chapter without discussing the highly controversial case of the Monongahela monster. For if the case is genuine (not a hoax, as some authors have suggested), one ship successfully obeyed the imperious command of this chapter’s title—by obtaining for scientific scrutiny the head of a sea serpent! On January 13,1852, while in latitude 3°10′S and longitude 131°50′W, the whale ship
Monongahela
of New Bedford encountered an enormous serpentine creature longer than the 100-foot ship itself, and just under 50 feet in diameter, with a 10-footlong alligator-like head whose jaws contained 94 teeth (each approximately three inches long and recurved like a snake’s).

During a titanic struggle, the ship’s sailors sought to capture their monstrous visitor by harpooning it; the next morning its lifeless carcass, brownish-yellow and 103 feet seven inches long, rose to the surface of the sea. Although giant snakes are not believed nowadays to be responsible for any of the various types of sea serpent reported over the years, this particular specimen did possess some distinctly ophidian characteristics, including its recurved teeth, a lower jaw whose bones were separate, and two lungs of which one was notably larger than the other. However, it also exhibited some highly un-snake-like features, such as a pair of whale-like blow-holes, and four paw-like projections of hard, loose flesh.

Taxonomie considerations notwithstanding, it was clearly impractical to attempt to preserve the gigantic creature’s entire carcass, so the sailors hacked off its ferocious-looking head for retention as absolute proof of this astonishing beast’s reality. The
Monongahela s
master, Captain Charles Seabury prepared a detailed account of the whole incident, including a full description of the creature itself; on February 6, the
Monongahela
encountered the brig
Gipsy
, journeying to Bridgeport, so Seabury handed his account to the
Gipsy’s
master, Captain Sturges, who promised to hand it into Bridgeport’s post office when the
Gipsy
arrived there. Presumably he kept his word, because various newspaper accounts of Seabury’s report duly appeared, including one in London’s
Times
for March 10,1852.

And this is where, for over a century, the story ended— because nothing more was heard of either the sea serpent head or the
Monongahela
carrying it. Accordingly, some cryptozoologists discounted the whole affair as an elaborate hoax, until 1959, which saw the publication of Frank Edward’s book
Stranger Than Science
. This revealed that the ship carrying back Seabury’s account had actually been the
Rebecca Sims
, with a Captain Gavitt as its master, and that Seabury’s Christian name was Jason, not Charles. In addition, Edwards had learned that many years after Seabury’s account had hit the headlines, the name board of the
Monongahela
had been discovered on the shore of Umnak Island in the Aleutians. So what had happened to the ship? As no other trace of it has apparently been found, if the incident was indeed genuine did some catastrophe occur during its continuing voyage that consigned the
Monongahela
and its entire crew to the bottom of the sea, thereby returning its unique cryptozoological cargo from whence it had come, the unknown ocean depths?

As with so many other cases on record within the ever-increasing chronicles of the sea serpent, the chances are that we will simply never know.

THE FOLLOWING CHAPTER CONSTITUTES IN ITS entirety and in largely unmodified form the cryptozoological checklist supplement of mine that was originally published in 1998 within
Fortean Studies
(vol. 5), and includes its accompanying self-contained bibliography.

Summarizing more than a hundred cryptids, Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans’s “Annotated Checklist of Apparently Unknown Animals With Which Cryptozoology Is Concerned” (Heuvelmans, 1986) was arguably his most significant publication since
Sur la Fiste des Bêtes Ignorées
(Heuvelmans, 1955). A slightly updated version, in French, was published in 1996, containing a few amendments (Heuvelmans, 1996). Otherwise, more than a decade has passed since this list originally appeared, during which period a considerable number of additional cryptids, previously unknown even to cryptozoologists, have attracted attention.

Some of these are mystery animals that had been documented in publications only recently perused for the first time by readers knowledgeable in cryptozoological matters; hence cryptozoologists had not been aware of their existence before. In other instances, mystery beasts never recorded in any publication, cryptozoological or otherwise, have been mentioned during conversations between local people and visiting scientists, explorers, or travelers.

As someone who has been working on a full-time professional basis in cryptozoology for many years, I have amassed an archive of material dealing with these hitherto overlooked cryptids that is now sufficiently sizeable to warrant the preparation of the first detailed supplement to Heuvelmans’s checklist, as now presented here. To facilitate consistency, the format of this supplement adheres to that of the original checklist wherever possible.

Similarly, necessarily echoing portions of Heuvelmans’s own introduction to his list, I must point out that this supplement is by no means complete. Obviously, I have not been able to read through every single book and journal ever published in search of cryptozoologically relevant reports. Equally, however, I have refrained from including examples that I do have on file but which I consider to be dubious or too vague to warrant coverage here. Also, please bear in mind that the inclusion in this supplement of a given cryptid does not guarantee its distinction from all living taxa currently recognized by science. Some may merely be morphs or aberrant individuals of recognised taxa. Furthermore, however rigorously any cryptozoological case is examined, the shadow of possible misidentification or outright fraud can never be entirely dispelled in the absence of conclusive physical evidence to examine.

Unlike Heuvelmans, I have included various creatures that officially became extinct during the earlier part of the 20th century but which may still survive today. In such cases, their continuing existence has yet to be recognized by science but they are known to local people, thereby complying with Heuvelmans’s own definition of a cryptid (Heuvelmans, 1982; Greenwell, 1984). In addition, they include examples that have been extensively investigated and hence have focused public attention on cryptozoological research, such as the thylacine (Tasmanian wolf) and the eastern cougar.

Amendments to some of Heuvelmans’s proposed identities for certain cryptids in his checklist have been proposed and published by fellow cryptozoologists since 1986. The most significant of these are presented here in an addendum, together with additional amendments and alternative identities that I consider merit mentioning in any supplement to that list.

Lastly: in contrast to Heuvelmans’s checklist, which did not contain bibliographical references for all of the cryptids listed in it, every cryptid account included here is accompanied by references that can be consulted for further details.

Extraordinary marine cryptids characterized by a profuse covering of white fur, a lengthy tail, and a long elephantine trunk or trunk-like proboscis at the anterior end of their body. The carcass of one such creature was washed ashore at Margate, South Africa, in November 1922; another was beached on Alaska’s Glacier Island in November 1936 (Heuvelmans, 1968; Chorvinsky, 1995; Shuker, 1997d). It could be argued that these were merely decomposing sharks or whales, and that their white fur was nothing more than dried-out connective tissue. If this is true, however, the manner in which decomposition can “create” their anomalous trunk-like appendage remains unresolved. In any event, a sizeable number of eyewitnesses had observed the Margate specimen while still alive, battling with two whales—and fully furred. Only later did its dead body wash ashore. Clearly, therefore, its fur cannot be explained away as decomposing connective tissue. Based upon eyewitness descriptions, the morphology of these trunked sea monsters cannot be reconciled with any known species, living or fossil. They are presumably mammalian, but without physical remains to examine it is not possible to progress further at this time in search of a satisfactory identity.

Unidentified mysticete (baleen) whale distinguished from all known species by possessing two dorsal fins, both erect, triangular, and well developed. Roughly 60 feet long, with greenish-grey back, long falciform flippers, and greyish-white underparts. Dubbed the rhinoceros whale, its principal record is a sighting made off the coast of Chile on September 4, 1867, by Italian naturalist Prof. Enrico Giglioli, who named this species
Amphiptera pacifica
. Reports of similar beasts have since been logged off Scotland, and from the Mediterranean near Corsica (Raynal & Sylvestre, 1991; Heuvelmans, 1996; Shuker, 1997d).

Mysterious greyish-black whale, roughly 25 feet long, and sporting a very distinctive, erect dorsal fin, at least five feet high, on the highest part of its back, sighted near Chilaw on Sri Lanka’s western coast on April 7,1868, by E.W.H. Holdsworth, a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London. He later learned that this unidentified whale was familiar to his vessel’s crew, who called it the “Palmyra fish” (its fin presumably reminding them of the tall erect palmyra tree common in their native Malabar home). Holdsworth was convinced that it was not a killer whale, the only known cetacean with a dorsal fin resembling his whale’s (Holdsworth, 1872; Shuker, 1997d).

Unidentified dolphin with brown upperparts and white belly, two specimens spied by Sir Peter Scott on February 4, 1968, among a school of piebald dolphins
Cephalorhynchus commersonii
in the Magellan Straits. They could simply have been white-bellied dolphins (formerly C.
albiventris);
if not, they may represent a new species (Scott, 1983; Shuker, 1997d).

Single-tusked, narwhal-like cetacean spied in the Antarctic Ocean’s Bransfield Strait on December 17, 1892, by crewmen aboard the
Balaena
during the Dundee Antarctic Expedition of 1892-1893. As
Monodon monoceros
, the only known living species of narwhal, is confined to Arctic waters, if their sighting was accurate there would seem to be an undiscovered southern counterpart in the Antarctic Ocean (Murdoch, 1894; Shuker, 1997d).

Dimorphic mystery ziphiid (beaked whale) often reported from the eastern tropical Pacific, occurring as a black-and-white morph and as a uniformly grey-brown morph. Dr. Robert L. Pitman has suggested that if not a new species or subspecies, it may be Longman’s beaked whale
Indopacetus pacificus
(Pitman, 1987; Shuker, 1993b).

Alleged manatee-like aquatic mammals reported from sea around the mid-Atlantic island of St. Helena. It has been suggested that these are elephant seals, not sirenians, but no formal investigation has so far been undertaken (Lydekker, 1899; Shuker, 1993a).

Possible existence of unrecorded populations of the coelacanth
Latimeria chalumnae
, or even an undescribed related species, in the Mexican Gulf, and perhaps also in the coastal waters of Easter Island (Fricke, 1989; Shuker, 1993b; Raynal & Mangiacopra, 1995; Shuker, 1995f).

Giant rat-tails (macrourids)—one, six feet long, spied in deepwater near Bermuda in 1930s; another, almost 10 feet long, just above Mexican Gulf seafloor in late 1960s (Soule, 1981).

Several named but still uncollected, unphotographed species of fish spied and documented by biologist William Beebe while observing marine fauna 2,100 feet beneath the surface of the sea in a bathysphere located five miles southeast of Bermuda’s Nonsuch Island. These include
Bathysphaera intacta
(a highly novel species of melanostomiatid),
Bathyceratias trilynchus
(angler fish with three “fishing rods”),
Bathyembrix istiophasma
(bizarre torpedo-shaped fish with large triangular posterior fins),
Bathysidus pentagrammus
(five-starred butterfly fish), and the scientifically unnamed abyssal rainbow gar (Beebe, 1934; Shuker, 1993b).