"Plesiosaur"

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Date
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This is just to add some detail to Katsumi Abe's response to David Schwimmer's
query regarding the Japanese "Plesiosaur". The following paragraph is taken
from "New England's Marvelous Monsters" by Robert Ellis Cahill.
Chandler-Smith Publishing House, Inc., 132 Lowell Street, Peabody, MA
1983(?), 48pp.

***
page 9:
        Most people do not believe in Sea Monsters, or more
specifically, sea serpents, and reported sightings of these
creatures are said to be either figments of warped
imaginations or outright lies. History reveals, however,
that since the turn of the 15th century there has been at
least one sea serpent sighting every year somewhere in the
world. On April 10, 1977, what all monster fanatics had
been waiting for, happened! A sea serpent was hauled up in
the nets of a Japanese fishing trawler, off New Zealand.
The 32-foot snake-like creature, with four giant flippers
and a long neck and tail, was brought aboard the 2460-ton
ship ZUIYUO MARU, from a depth of 1000 feet; but within
minutes it was deposted back into the sea. The reason for
letting it go, explained Michihiko Yano, a fishing company
executive, who was aboard, was because "It was dead and
decomposing, and its stench was overpowering. Also, a
fatty liquid oozed from the creature, splattering the deck,
and we feared it would spoil our cargo of fish." Yano made
sketches of the creature, and photos of it were taken, then
it was dropped back overboard. In Tokyo, Paleontologists
were enraged at the fishermen, believing that they should
have at least preserved the skeleton. Professor Yoshinori
Imaizumi, Director of Research at Japan's National Science
Museum, studied to [sic.] photos and sketches and determined
that the dead monster was a reptile, not a fish or mammal,
"and it looks very much like a Plesiosarus, which supposedly
became extinct 100 million years ago." [accompanied by a
full-page, but low quality photo similar to that shown in
the NBC program, and attributed to the Associated Press]

****
The photograph is certainly suggestive, although not
conclusive evidence. Take it for what it's worth.


Thomas B. Kellogg
Department of Geological Sciences
  and Institute for Quaternary Studies
University of Maine
Orono, ME  04469

(207) 581-2194