Cryptids of the deep

[Dinwar]

You should know better than that. In fact I'm certain you do, but for those who don't, Plesiosaurs, Icthyosaurs and Mosasaurs were not Dinosaurs.

A fair point; I misspoke. There were more interesting things in the ocean than Plesiosaurs, too, and Icthyosaurs are interesting from an evolutionary perspective (they have a FANTASTIC record!!!!), but are basically sharks or dolphins. Some of the ancient sea critters got weird even by the standards of paleontology!

My point still stands: Folks who look for cryptids tend towards the relatively boring end of the spectrum. With all the wild and weird and wonderful organisms that have ever existed, they pick the ones that are practically mundane.

 

[Dinwar]

Oh, I don't know--I like this completely non-useful redefinition of "cryptid" because it means I've totally seen cryptids!

Well yeah--that's the problem. I've seen all kinds of things I can't identify. Most of them are perfectly identifiable, I just wasn't able to do so at the time (dodging dozers is NOT the time to break out a book on Camelops femurs!). By the definition I was discussing, that's a cryptid--despite the fact that I only couldn't identify it because of time constraints.

On one job one of our contractors found a fossil footprint. Really weird--you could tell it was something, but not what. Took us two weeks to figure out it was a footprint, in fact--and another three months before we could find someone who could identify it. By the definition I was discussing, that made it a cryptid while it was being analyzed. Which is nonsense; it was just unidentified. Really cool, though--turned out it was a marine mammal that hadn't lost its land-legs yet (as opposed to, say, a walrus, which can come onto land but obviously isnt' good at it). The reason it was hard to ID was that the creature had turned while making the print, meaning that the whole thing was distorted. The guy who identified it loved it, as it demonstrated some interesting things about its locomotion.

 

[Damien Evans]

Well yeah--that's the problem. I've seen all kinds of things I can't identify. Most of them are perfectly identifiable, I just wasn't able to do so at the time (dodging dozers is NOT the time to break out a book on Camelops femurs!). By the definition I was discussing, that's a cryptid--despite the fact that I only couldn't identify it because of time constraints.

On one job one of our contractors found a fossil footprint. Really weird--you could tell it was something, but not what. Took us two weeks to figure out it was a footprint, in fact--and another three months before we could find someone who could identify it. By the definition I was discussing, that made it a cryptid while it was being analyzed. Which is nonsense; it was just unidentified. Really cool, though--turned out it was a marine mammal that hadn't lost its land-legs yet (as opposed to, say, a walrus, which can come onto land but obviously isnt' good at it). The reason it was hard to ID was that the creature had turned while making the print, meaning that the whole thing was distorted. The guy who identified it loved it, as it demonstrated some interesting things about its locomotion.

So, Remingtonocetus or something similar?

 

[Dinwar]

So, Remingtonocetus or something similar?

Probably a bit more adapted to aquatic life. It was a relative of the sea cow, I remember that much, but the specifics elude me. I can see the thing in my mind, but I can't tell you who made it . Sadly, I wasn't really involved in the process of identification; I just got to write the reports to the agencies saying "Nope, still haven't identified it yet. We need another month before submitting final compliance documentation." Which they were happy to do because you NEVER get a genuine puzzle at the salvage phase (you don't realize you have one until the prep and identification phase), so they were as excited as us to see what the devil it was! (For the uninitiated, you typically have 90 days from the stop of monitoring to submit final documentation, and the agencies actually cared about this one because the client had annoyed them.)

 

[Jodie]

About 20 years ago I took my nightly walk through my suburban neighborhood. As I was walking down a fairly dimly lit street I saw, only a few yards away, some sort of...something that appeared to be a living creature. It appeared to be about two feet long and maybe six inches wide and moved like an inchworm, only much faster. It was partially obscured by some autumn leaves that had collected in the street and rustled through the leaves fairly loudly.

Well that was randomly odd, a hoop snake that lost it's hoop, that'ld be my guess.