Japanese Recent Plesiosaur?

["David Schwimmer" <SCHWIMMER_DAVID@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

  Dear all:
  
      I will be using a tape of the Charlton Heston TV program 
"Mysterious origins of Man" in an ad-hoc  seminar this week.  One of 
the claims within is that a Japanese fishing boat hauled up a 
plesiosaur (termed a "pleliosaur" by the "scientist" in the video).

   I have a year-old tabloid (Sun) front page with the same notion 
cartooned on it.  Query: has anyone out there heard of this, and if 
so, what was the basis of the claim?  Is it absolutely baseless 
fiction or a misidentification?  And let's be scientific: can it be a 
real surviving sauropterygian?

   I'd appreciate a response before the seminar on Thursday.
   
   At least by using the tape for  discussion we can extract some 
benefit from the drivel.

Cheers,

David Schwimmer
Dep't of Chemistry & Geology
Columbus College, Columbus GA 31907-5645
schwimmer_david@cc.csg.peachnet.edu 

No, I'm not Ross.