There is a report doing the rounds in the media just now that is being hyped along the lines of "Study suggests Loch Ness monster was mass delusion triggered by discovery of dinosaurs". So ran the headline of the Daily Telegraph as it spoke to Charles Paxton who co-authored a paper on sea serpent sightings and parallel discoveries of marine megafauna fossils.
The actual paper is entitled " Did nineteenth century marine vertebrate fossil discoveries influence sea serpent reports?" and is published in the latest Earth Sciences History Journal. Charles Paxton says a bit about it on his university's website. I recall being at a talk on this subject given by Charles last year in Edinburgh but defer any critique of this paper - mainly because I do not have it and regard myself as no expert in sea serpent reports.
But let us just put things right here and say that this study has essentially little or nothing to do with the Loch Ness Monster. Back in the 19th century when various monster fossils were being unearthed, the Monster was a local story confined to the Highlands and camouflaged with the veneer of the Water Horse and Kelpie culture.
Now cryptozoologists' view of the media can be a love-hate thing. They continue to publish sightings, videos and photos (though a lot are at best inconclusive). That is good and generally keeps the monster in the limelight. But when they get a hold of stuff like this, they have an almost obsessive urge to link any aquatic monster story to the Loch Ness Monster.
The simple reason is that Nessie is clickbait, sea serpents are far less so. So you have to take the rough with the smooth and hope people who actually read it see the inconsistency between headline and paper.
The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com
I came across these recent media reports yesterday and it all means nothing, maybe they are using to LNM as a hook to increase story value? How much do these media sources actually know about Loch Ness ? I would say very minimal. Once again we have a weak suggestion portrayed as a news story.
ReplyDeleteIn Alberta Canada we have a rich deposit of dinosaur fossils, many bones and skeletons, recently I believe large T rex was discovered and the people living in Alberta are not succumbing to mass hysteria regarding local monster sightings. The dino bones have never created illusions or fantasies of living dinosaurs or big monsters.
Nessie is clickbait as you said it Roland, the media just want a reaction of any sort.
Don't get many sea serpent reports these days do you? Certainly not well publicised. Used to pour over all the classics when I was a kid.
ReplyDeleteThere is almost certainly a correlation between the discovery of dinosaurs and the way Nessie was promoted. Most at one time (some still do) thought that she was a plesiosaur. Course it had a bit of an influence but it wasn't the catalyst. And you're spot on about the way the press both ridicule but adore Nessie stories.
I remember Charles Paxton promoting a similar theory on a sceptical TV program from a few years ago. He linked Nessie sightings directly with the King Kong movie of 1933. I personally don't understand this. If nothing is there why would people see it? If it was a seal or a cormorant, why would observers see an animal like no other on planet earth? I can understand misidentification of wakes etc, but I personally have never hallucinated an unknown creature out of nowhere. Or imagined that a seal was a plesiosaur. I'm not even sure that there is a recognised science behind this theory. Regards sea serpents, I have no idea where they've all gone. Perhaps climate change has got them.
ReplyDeleteThere is an easy way to disprove this theory: are there any reports of sea serpents/lake monsters with long necks, full bodies and flippers prior to the 19th popularization of dinosaurs and marine reptiles? There seems to be traditional North American native art that depicts such creatures and I've always wondered about the dragon prowed Viking longboats and the creature they represented...
ReplyDeleteVery good point. I will have to do a bit of digging, but I'm fairly sure there were these creatures sighted before the modern era of paleontology.
DeleteThere is an increase in the proportion of sightings with necks over 200 years. That is not to say there were not reports of sea serpents with necks prior to the 19th century. There were. We are not claiming palaeontological discoveries initiated sea serpent reports. They clearly did not.
DeleteWe don't comment on the Loch Ness Monster in the paper except to point out there may be a peak in sea serpent reports in 1933-34 because of Nessie. A pdf can be found at https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/17586 .
No, I am not an advocate of King Kong causing Nessie. Other people have claimed this. The timing does not work. See Paxton C.G.M. (2015) Nessie: daughter of Kong? Fortean Times 323, 54 – 55.
ReplyDeleteDid King Kong have professor Tucker's elasmosaurus in it?
DeleteYou know,the one he saw in loch Ness?