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Tuesday 6 August 2013

Longneck / Loch Ness Monster Composites


Here are my statistical outcomes from doing my own analyses on Longneck reports worldwide, together with explanatory notes. The 40 foot long figure was the one obtained by Dinsdale and my data tends to reinforce that: but in sightings at sea the figures are typically at a 60 foot scale, or measurements 150% of these. I assume the difference is because the sightings at sea tend to be less accurate because the scale and distance cannot be made out as easily.




The reconstructions of the head were done independently of the video resulta below, which come here by way of Scott Mardis' comparisons and from the "Not Just Nessie" website. 



The profile is very significantly the same wedge shape tapering down from back to front, with a wide gash of a mouth and the eyes placed about halfway along the length.

 
 
"Not Just Nessie": below is Scott Mardis' comparison to a Plesiosaur skull.
 
 
 
Above, Oudeman's SS reconstructions showing the heads as being much the same shape as the statistical averages reconstruction I made myself. I have put a lighter-coloured circle around the eye to make it show up better in this enlargement.
 
Below are two views from sightings of the Loch Ness Monster showing the appearances of the head from above and from in front too compare to the other comparable points of view from the other locations. The view of the neck overall in the drawing of a recent Periscope sighting at Loch Ness shows the longer forward section of the neck, much the same thickness throughout, and then the larger and thicker rear portion of the neck (Significantly also shown in the Surgeon's Photo) The same type of neck features in the Corinthian SS witness' illustration reproduced below.


 
The Cuba SS drawings chosen in the Sea Slug article actually help illustrate that the reported shape of the head is consistently reported in all of the reports from the different points of view.
These illustrations are from Heuvelmans' book In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents and they are added here to illustrate the apparent head shape of Longnecks from several angles. The Southwold SS has a good view of the wedge-shaped head tapering down from back to front, and Mrs. Borgeest's sighting shows the very flat and wide "Snakelike" head from front-on. Heuvelmans remarks on both aspects (The wedge-shaped, taper-down profile is what is sometimes called "Horselike") in the case of the Corinthian SS it seems the Euryapsid openings in the back of the skull are taken for eyes (this seems to be a consistent misinterpretation among some witnesses and it is even possible that this area is marked with false decoy-eyes such as occur in many different kinds of animals. There is a quandary about sea-serpent eyes in that some of them have them prominently marked while the rest (Femalse and young) have the eyes coloured about the same as the rest of the animal and the eyes are not obvious. In the reconstruction composite above I have indicate the eye sockets as being fairly large and visible from all angles, but it is entirely possible witnesses are seeing false eyespots instead. Among their own kind the false eyespots serve to divert potentially damaging attacks from the real eyes when males are sparring. And my interpretation of the Corinthian SS is that it actually is a male surprised while sparring with another male, and the creature has a mouthful of the "Mane or fin" material ripped off of the other male. The position of the material makes it look more like it is coming out of the mouth rather than from the places where animals ordinarily have whiskers.
The head on this one is exaggerated by making it too long generally but it does show about the right overall shape as seen from above.The statistical norm would have it that the head would be much smaller in proportion to the neck, and more especially much shorter.
 

 
Depiction of traditional Scandinavian Sea Serpent. Same kind of head, I think the dark patches behind the eyes once again indicate the presence of Euryapsid skull openings such as are also indicated in many other sightings and artistic depictions.. Below "The Children of Loki"
with the big snake being the Midgard Serpent. The head is modeled after carvings of Dragons on Viking churches and such, also traditional, and once again the same type of head. [Traditionally the tongues are depicted as pointed, not forked) There is an earlier separate blog entry on Viking depictions of Longnecks and why they are Euryapsids, and other blog articles on various similar dragons heads the world over and back to the dawn of civilization, with specifications as to why they are Euryapsids, too. Snakes do not have skulls that are anything like a Plesiosaur's skull and they have no structure corresponding to a Euryapsid skull opening.



 

The original study was done between 1975 and 1980 in several revisions and the SITU archives should still have handwritten copies of the earlier drafts. The document was ultimately never published but these result are easily summarised and presented as they are here. The 1980, final version of the manuscript included "A Field Guide to Water Monsters" which was being submitted for publication in PURSUIT as a series of articles starting in 1986, but stopped when I moved out of New Jersey, and started up again for submission to PURSUIT in 1990 (Typed articles with illustrations provided, also ultimately unpublished, PURSUIT became moribund at about that point)

 
 ADDENDUM:
"Joe Richardson" is becoming dreadfully tedious insisting that I explain every single instance of why a Euryapsid skull opening has to be a Euryapsid skull opening. I have said on numerous occasions, the matter is written up in earlier blogs on this site. "Joe" really must learn how to look things up in the provided index and do his own research. I refuse to spoon feed him any further and I refuse to repeat myself endlessly on matters where I have already answered him before. He has never shown me once that he even pays attention when I cite sources to him and he never seems to learn anything, he continues to re-assert the same tired old arguments even after he has been thoroughly refuted. "Joe Richardson" is hereby served notice that he is making an irritant of himself and his comments will be deleted until and unless he can stop sounding like a broken record. And once again, if you "Joe" do not have the anatomical expertise which gives you the authority to criticize or comment on Plesiosaurian anatomy, your remarks carry no weight as criticism or indeed even as any sort of a relevant argument.

22 comments:

  1. I have only two records of necks greater than 4 m reported from Loch Ness, the mean neck length reported is 1.95 m (n=30). The mean estimated total length of the animal in sightings which give a measured neck length (n=2) is 6.88 m. The mean estimated total length of animals from Loch Ness is rather less than 40 ft quoted here as a new publication will shortly show.

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    1. There is a problem in that owing to the construction of the neck itself, the reae section is frequently left out of estimations thus making the neck seem to be much shorter than it actually is. The front portion with the more or less even thickness is what is often counted as the neck and the rear thicker section is often thought to be the forward part of the body. Any estimations of the length of the neck have got to account for this feature. I did have a commentator mention here recently that "There was a new rash of sightings of 20-foot necks as Loch Ness in the 1990s" but they did not identify the sources for that statement. And yes,40 feet does seem to me a bit large as an average: it has the benefit of making many of the measurements come out as convenient whole numbers and I have stated that as part of my reason for choosing that figure.

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    2. Well we only have what the witnesses tell us about neck lengths and of course we don't know how much of the neck is below the water.

      A "chosen" length of 40 ft is not remotely a mean of the estimated lengths from the reports.

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    3. Incidentally I have mentioned that problem with the statistics on the neck of the Loch Ness Monster quite early on in this blog and specifically as regards Dinsdale's reconstruction. Dinsdale estimates the length at 40 feet, the head-and-neck at 10 feet, the body at 20 feet of the 40 feet, and the tail at 10 feet of the 40. Examining his drawing, you can see that the base of the neck is being counted as the forepart of the body and actually the tail should be moved forward to be in the proper relationship to the pelvis, where the rear flippers are. the adjustment means the head and neck (including the heavier rear section) and the body are now both about equivalent at 15 feet each out of the 40. Which is the primary adjustment my model shown above allows for. Making this adjustment brings the inland sightings and the sightings at sea together, shortening the neck does not help in that regard. And of course the neck becomes statistically longer when you eliminate the longer 'string of buoys' humps as being the result of wave action.

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    4. If you are saying the reports are significantly les than 40 feet on the average you are doing one of two things: A) you are probably using tables of sightings as provided by Roy Mackal or the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau. THESE FIGURES HAVE BEEN DOCTORED. They are frequently pared down to a minimum and sometimes to quite a ridiculous degree (such that a "Huge and dreadful monster" is put down to a length of only six feet; and/or B ) You are including significant numbers of observations of other things

      The proportions of the neck are quite obvious when going by what the witnesses actually say-you have a thinner part of the neck and a thicker part of the neck, and it is easy to tell if the witness include one or the other, or both, just going by the proportions the witness specified.

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    5. There are eyewitness accounts where the witnesses say the neck had a thick bit and a thin bit and the proportion was 80/20 or similar?

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    6. There are several reports which say that the neck had a thicker base and a thinner length of neck, and that the thinner part of the neck was approximately the end 70% of the length while the base part was about 30% of the length, and Mackal mentions there were such reports in passing. That is not precisely the same thing as you stated, but it is in the same ballpark.

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  2. Very interesting Dale. Two suggestions though...I think you should've suggested your hypothesis about the "humps" being an organ like that of a sperm whale, as I don't think a plesiosaur could have fat. Also, my current focus area of research hasn't been lake monster sightings so I don't know about the tailed animal sightings in that respect, but isn't it true that a majority of tailed sea serpent sightings involved manes or hair on the body? I would've possibly added filaments of some sort to your model, either a ridge like an iguana or maybe respiration supplementing filaments like those on Hairy Frogs.

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  3. Btw: page 247 of In The Wake is where I read that about the tailed sea serpent having "manes" or "hair." I think that, if these really are euryapsid reptiles, then these alleged features are likely what I mentioned in the last comment. I really wonder about Sanderson's suggestion of filaments supplementing in oxygen intake, if these animals are reptiles. Redness of the animals' "hair" could mean it contains hemoglobin.

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    1. Yes I know that passage: Hevelmans himself completely ignores that comment thereafter. And as I have just said, ALL reports of body hair seem to refer to the mane only, and the mane is only called hairt part of the time. On other occasions it is spoken of as spiny or scaly

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    2. The redness of the hairs is another sorting artifact, the mane is ordinartily the same colouration as the rest of the creature. Many creatures (and their manes) are rtreeported as green

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    3. I know of no records (in Loch Ness or at sea) that explicitly report a green mane (brown yes, silvery yes) except for a British Columbia sighting from 1937 where a mane is described as being the colour of seaweed (which may be green) in Bousfield & Le Blond 1995. Can you provide citations?

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    4. "The colour of seaweed" or being like seaweed is actually one of the commoner descriptions of the mane, but that description more often that refers to kelp (which is brown) Olive green or greenish brown creature reports are less common than the reddish brown ones, but they do occur both at sea and in Loch Ness. Harold T Wilkins records a report of two green Plesiosaurs in a creek at East Looe, Cornwall, on July 5, 1949, and they had jagged crests down the back (Strange Mysteries of Time and Space, 1959). A further report from PURSUIT, following up on the matter of the Santa Cruz carcass, which some thought to be a sort of dinosaur, also mentioned a sighting of a green creature with a jagged or spiny back crest described as looking like broken glass. Heuvelmans describes some sightings of Merhorses ("Cadborosaurus") as looking greenish or bluish, but puts that down as being due to reflections of the colour of the water (p 553). Several Sea-serpent reports mention green manes and Heuvelmans on occasion uses that as a reason for saying they were hoaxes. The early "Cadborosaurus" reports by F.W. Kemp and Major Langley were of greenish creatures with jagged crests all the way down the back and thus presumably of the same colour as the rest of the body (In the Wake of the Sea Serpents, page 441-444): manes were mentioned but not as being coloured distinctly from the rest of the body either. At a rough estimate, reddish brown creatures are seen twice as often as the greenish brown or blackish green ones, grey and greyish brown ones more commonly.

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  4. Oh so you don't like the notion of a fat Plesiosaur? You said differently when Tim Morris (Pristichampsus) posted this reconstruction on Deviant Art:
    http://pristichampsus.deviantart.com/art/All-Yesterdays-Fan-art-15-347723787
    And it is nothing to find body fat present on a lizard or a turtle, for example.
    NO you are wrong about both the tails and the body hair, going by what the reports actually say. In regards to body hair it is usually judged buy an irregular edge rather than actually discerning an actually hairy body.. I see you are quoting Heuvelmans (Quoting Sanderson) about the "Hairs" on the hairy frogs. Statistically speaking and focusing on Loch Ness Monster reports: The head and neck are reported in about 40% of the cases (ie, about 60% do not mention any head or neck), and specific mentions of the tail are at 10-12% Going by Long-necked Sea-Serpent reports you get a similar set of percentages, only a higher proportion of "Periscopes" probably because they are more noticeable at sea and reported more often than just the head breaking the surface. The maned animals at Loch Ness are reported something like 5% of the cases, or roughly half as often as the tails are. Humps are reported rather more often than the head and neck and the best reports include them both: there is also a higher percentage of sightings which include head, neck and humps at sea. this is no doubt a difference in the sampling procedure. Limbs or flippers (Or movement in the water indicating them) occur in about 15% of the cases: specific references to body covering or texture is also 15%. There are no good reports which specify hair or fur, or scaly skin as the body texture, and throughout the literature, you only find distinct references to hair, bristles, spines or scales only in reference to the mane or crest. About half of the body texture reports say the skin is smooth and about half say the skin is rough, but it is most common for the belly or front of the neck to be smooth and the back to be rough, especially nearer to the spine.
    Reports of horns, or specific mentions of eyes, are reported at vanishingly small percentages, such as 2%. Doubtless this is because most sightings are made far enough away that small details cannot be made out.

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    1. There are reports of hairy bodied Loch Ness monsters e.g. Witchell (1975) pg. 61
      There are also reports of scaly bodies Loch Ness monsters e.g. Scotsman 19/4/1934, Nessletter 36.

      But I don't know of reports that refer to a smooth throat with a rough back.


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    2. That would once again be a report of a mane and a "hairy edge" to the body. when you look at a body dead-on at that kind of a range, you ordinarily cannot tell it is hairy in the part you are looking directly at, so most reports of this type mean that they saw what they interpreted as a hairy edge, because the edge is where you can tell the difference. This principle incidentally applies equally well throughout all of Cryptozoology

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    3. Incidentally several reports specify the back is rough or the front of the neck is smooth, although I do not recall one right off which said both things together at the same time.

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  5. The thickness of the neck at at the base would obviously be be necessary to support the weight and movement of such a long neck. So I'm wondering perhaps, should that be taken taken as part of the necks structure.
    As far as the fat is concerned, being a possible reptile, and not be possible that fat is stored in the tail as some reptiles do giving the creatures a shorter, more stubby looking tail when there is an ample store, but giving a longer, leaner impression when this reserve has been depleted.Perhaps, this could also explain why some of the creature seen have humps, as these could be fat reserves as most animals use this method in cold climates, just a thought.

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    1. Laymen could well be thinking in those terms. Anatomically speaking of course the first statement is absurd. A neck is a section of the vertebral column between the head and body, distinct from each. The body part is where the ribs come out of the vertebrae. The free part without ribs forward of the torso is still the neck no matter how thick and heavy it is, and mechanically it needs to be thick and heavy to hold up the whole neck against water resistance. We can tell where the actual torso is from the position of the limb placements. The limbs are placed well within the area where the body shape broadens out and the overall shape also needs that effect for streamlining. And yes there are reports that suggest the humps (therefore theoretically the accumulation of fat) extend into the base of the tail, far enough back that the area is well behind the placement of the rear flippers. On Dinsdale's Loch Ness Monster composite (reviewed on this blog earlier) you can clearly see the structure of both the base of the neck and the base of the tail, although he seems to have underestimated the size of the limbs.

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  6. Comment just entered by "Joe Robinson"

    ' "... if you 'Joe' do not have the anatomical expertise...(so that you can) criticize or comment on plesiosaurian anatomy, your remarks carry no weight as criticism or even as any sort of a relevant argument."
    You do not have the expertise necessary to do that either, Dale.'

    Now this really is the limit. I started out training for a degree in Paleontology and specializing in Mesozoic marine life. I later traded that for a specialization in fossil hominids under the heading of Physical Anthropology and I have my degree in that. Besides that degree I have a list of honours as long as your arm and I graduated with an A+ average in at least one course for every one of the last four terms in getting my degree.

    You contemptible peon, what right have YOU to question my credentials not knowing anything about my background? From beginning to end you have done nothing but make mistaken claims, resorted to saying "the authorities say thus and so" when in fact you were making INCORRECT statements at the time, and you show the most deplorable lack of any kind of understanding in anatomy, taxonomy, paleontology, paleoecology, physiology, physics and what have you. I have consistently found you to be a pigheaded arrogant conceited self-centered spoiled brat that not only refuses to listen after he asks for the answer to a question, he also lacks the ability to follow indicated links or read the standard references.

    I have HAD it with you, buster, you are BANNED from this blog since you are a thundering know-nothing loudmouth with no expertise in ANYTHING you venture any opinions on and an obvious refusal to read ANYTHING that I give to you to read. You will not take advise and you will not take a hint. And I am not going to take any more crap off of you.

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  7. I'm sorry; I forgot that it was I, not you, who deleted that part of my above comment.

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  8. I get so frustrated dealing with ignorance. the human race to me has the collective world outlook of a 16 year old kid we know it all , but least there's some of us that realize we don't know jack as a species.
    I am a professional fishermen in Maryland and I've seen things that rare and amazing it's funny how a moment of observation and realization can change a person's view of the world .

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