A word about cryptolinks: we are not responsible for the content of cryptolinks, which are merely links to outside articles that we think are interesting, (sometimes for the wrong reasons) usually posted up without any comment whatsoever from me.
A mysterious sea creature with a set of sharp teeth washed up on a U.K. beach last week, prompting wide speculation as to what it could be—the wildest being a dinosaur or the Loch Ness Monster.
David Mackland was walking with his family on Easthaven beach north of St. Andrews on the east coast of Scotland when he came across the carcass of the menacing creature. He had no idea what he had stumbled upon.
“We were just walking on the beach to see what we could find and we came across this,”
Mackland told the U.K. Evening Telegraph. “I would say it was 4 to 5 feet long and about a foot wide. It was pretty big.
“You could see the teeth straight away.
“I don’t know what it is. To be honest, I looks a bit like an eel … You don’t usually see stuff like that. You very rarely see fish on the beach. You sometimes see dead birds, but it is unusual to see that.”
Mackland said a big chunk had been taken out of it and that it must have been killed at sea before washing up on the beach. He took photos and set out to determine its identity.
Online speculation ran the gamut from the humorous—a relative of Nessie?—to the more logical. Pike, shark, eel, and ling were among the guesses. Stephen McKelvie of the St. Andrews Aquarium also weighed in on the matter.
New from the Frontiers of Zoology:
The hunt for British Big Cats attracts far more newspaper-column inches than any other cryptozoological subject. There are so many of them now that we feel that they should be archived by us in some way, so we should have a go at publishing a regular round-up of the stories as they come in. In September 2012 Emma Osborne decided that the Mystery Cat Study Group really deserved a blog of its own within the CFZ Blog Network.
In an article for the first edition of Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans wrote that cryptozoology is the study of 'unexpected animals' and following on from that perfectly reasonable assertion, it seems to us that whereas the study of out of place birds may not have the glamour of the hunt for bigfoot or lake monsters, it is still a perfectly valid area for the Fortean zoologist to be interested in. So after about six months of regular postings on the main bloggo Corinna took the plunge and started a 'Watcher of the Skies' blog of her own as part of the CFZ Bloggo Network.
I was up late last night trying to finish
OTT#69. It will, I hope, be out sometime later today. I am also preparing for my
chat with the legendary Mick Abrahams tomorrow. I saw him live in Exeter way
back when (1977) and am looking forward to speaking to him. Many thanks to Rick
Wakeman for setting it up. The kittens (now christened 'The Terrible Twins' are
rampaging around the house. Lilith (the black one) registered her disapproval
vocally then I rolled onto her during the night, but apart from her dignity
being bruised she was unscathed. Frunobulax spent much of the night cuddled up
to Prudence, who is beginning to get used to them even though she is usually
scared of cats.