Dead Monster Washes Ashore in Montauk

[Octahedron]

This monster certainly is not a hoax.

It's one of the selected possible running mates of John McCain's Campaign. I've my sources.

[Sily]

Haha.... !  :D  icon_lachtot

[Richard]

It sounds like it might be a raccoon.

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-new...schwemmte/

[DreamTime]

Man how easily the masses are fooled. They draw a picture of a racoon over that 'beast' and everyone all of a sudden "can see it." I'm sorry...this is way too much of a stretch for me to believe. Why is there no fur at all? How can a BEAK be mistaken for a nose with missing teeth? Not even the ears are the same.

Nope...for me this is still a mystery monster.

[Richard]

It sounds like the raccoon theory is incorrect. 
 

US biologists, who examined the body, stated that the creature was not known to science. Newsday quoted William Wise, the director of Stony Brook University's Living Marine Resources Institute, who also tried to comment the photograph.

The scientist said that it was not:

- a raccoon (the legs are too long in proportion to the body);
- a sea turtle (sea turtles do not have teeth);
- a rodent (rodents have two big teeth in front of their mouths).

http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteri..._monster-0

 

[Richard]

Montauk Monster Mystery Goes Hollywood

Thursday , August 07, 2008
Fox News

The saga of the so-called Montauk Monster appears to have taken another bazarre turn, this time toward Hollywood, with the Web site of a movie production crew claiming to have the "kidnapped" carcas.

The Web site montauk-monster.com reported Thursday that the crew of "Splinterheads," a movie about carnival life being filmed in Patchogue, New York — not far from where the "monster" reportedly was found — posted the claim and a photo of the carcas on its Web site, splinterheadsmovie.com.

"We have the Montauk Monster," the site proclaims, along with a photo of the beast.

An accompanying Web site, sersenpark.com, claims the animal is "most likely a prop used in (Darren) Goldberg’s film Splinterheads." Goldberg is listed as the low-budget film's producer.

"A mystery source called 'Tonya' " claims that the Montauk Monster is a stunt that will be revealed when the movie is release early next year, the site reports.

The mystery of the beaked beast found on an upscale East Hampton, N.Y., beach in mid-July deepened Tuesday when local real-estate agent Eric Olsen told the East Hampton, N.Y., Star newspaper that he's the mystery man who picked the famous cryptid carcass off the beach last month — but now some dastardly bandit has made off with the remains.

"Someone came and took the carcass. Now I have to hunt for my damn creature," Olsen told the newspaper.

Olsen recounted that he'd taken the dead animal from the beach the night of July 13 and thrown it into the back yard of his friend Noel Arikian to rot.

The pair planned to have a New York City artist work with the bones. All went well until the bloated beast vanished from Arikian's property last weekend, Olsen claimed.

Meanwhile, animal experts weighed in with their theories about the bloated beast.

"Animal Planet" wildlife expert Jeff Corwin told FOX News that the "beak is actually canine teeth.

"What we have is an incredibly rare — raccoon," Corwin said tongue-in-cheek.

The women who first revealed the photo had a different view.

"It exists," said Rachel Goldberg, Courtney Fruin and Jenna Hewitt, denying they'd Photoshopped a picture of a dead dog.

"It decomposed in our friend's back yard," said Goldberg — who may or may not be related to "Splinterhead" producer Danny Goldberg, a claim made by mystery-woman "Tanya."

To complicate matters, Alanna Nevitski, who e-mailed the original photo that started the whole brouhaha, told New York magazine that the three women were "full of" what dogs and raccoons produce a lot of, and that they had nothing to do with the picture.

Stayed tuned, Monster Heads.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,399803,00.html

[Richard]

Discovery On Ocean Beach Another 'Montauk Monster'?

By Joe Wojtas     Published on 9/29/2008 

New London—As Tom and Bobbette Clapsadle of Waterford strolled along the water at Ocean Beach Park Sunday afternoon with their two sons, they spotted an almost alien-looking corpse lying amongst the seaweed.

We said, 'Oh my God, look at that,' ” said Tom Clapsadle.

The first thing Bobbette thought they had discovered was the celebrated creature known as the “Montauk monster.”

About two and half feet long with powerful shoulders and a pointed, turtlelike snout, the Ocean Beach carcass looks very much like a fleshy, beaked creature found in July on Long Island. Stories and photos about that discovery appeared in newspapers and on television and there was rampant Internet speculation about what is was. Some joked it must have been the result of an experiment gone bad at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. The Montauk animal was never identified with certainty.

The Clapsadles, who had seen a report on television about the Montauk monster, said it looked like the same thing to them. They reported the find to the Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration, which said it might look at the creature today once it had seen photos.

Tom Clapsadle said the corpse had no strong odor and the seagulls did not seem interested in it, something he found strange. Others on the beach speculated it might be a sea turtle, dog, fisher cat or raccoon.

Maggie Jones, director of the Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center in Mystic, said Sunday night after examining photos that her best initial guess would be a raccoon.

“I'm quite certain of it,” she said. “The arrangement of the teeth look like a raccoon and the skull is pretty distinctive. It's nothing else I can think of.”

Still, the find left Bobbette Clapsadle a little uncomfortable.

“I'm not going to swim in the ocean if there's stuff like that out there,” she said.

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=17dfab6...6cc2a1ff73

[Richard]

Montauk Monster Wins Award, Honored by Animal Planet

From Unknown to Award-Winning Celebrity in Six Months

By saul relative, published Dec 22, 2008

The Montauk Monster, or "Monty" (as he is sometimes referred to), is now a true star. It has starred in a commercial, been featured on a major cable network, and won an award. In fact, nothing saw a quicker rise to fame in 2008 other than Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. And many still do not know what to think of either of them.

When the Montauk Monster washed ashore in New York, it is doubtful that the bloated carcass had any aspirations of becoming world famous, winning awards, or starring on television. But that is exactly what the dead thing went and did.

The Montauk Monster became one of the most celebrated stories of 2008, saturating the internet with stories and blogs that speculated as to its very nature and from whence it had come. All from a couple of pictures. It made the 6 o'clock and the 11 o'clock news. It made the national news.

Pictures of the Montauk Monster were everywhere within days...

Although it was later determined by specialists to be the water-logged body of a large raccoon, the Montauk Monster entered the imaginations of millions around the world. A few thought the entire matter a hoax. For some, the strange-looking beast remained unexplained, a cryptid, the product of some secret government experiment or a denizen of the ocean heretofore undiscovered. For others, it was a grotesque but interesting diversion. The pictures and the animal quickly became part of modern lore and an accepting pop culture.

No matter what it was or what any one individual believed it to be, it became famous.

And then, according to Gawker, it appeared in a commercial for Volkswagen. A little smaller perhaps. A bit more fishy. But the "dog fish" featured in the Volkswagen commercials certainly may have evolved from the Montauk Monster pictures. Many bloggers certainly felt as much.

But Animal Planet showed "Monty" the respect the anomaly deserved. The cable channel devoted to glamorizing citizens of the animal kingdom named the Montauk Monster and the three women who discovered the beast (and took the original pictures) to their "Top 10 Animal Stories From 2008." "Monty" came in fourth place. But the beast was in excellent company. It isn't every day someone (or something) gets honored alongside television royalty (Oprah finished third with her story on puppy mills), a cross-species mother (a golden retriever that nursed tiger cubs), and a knight (a penguin received a knighthood - really).

Even with that accolade, the Montauk Monster's shooting star had not completed its arc...

The Urlesque blog, a meme-culture blog owned by AOL, presented its first annual awards this year - the Urlies. The Montauk Monster photo won the first-ever "WTF of the Year" award.

And to think, back in July, "Monty" was originally thought of as some washed up unknown.

******

More Montauk Monster articles:

"New Monsters Everywhere: Montauk Monster, Honey Island Swamp Monster, Chupacabra"

"Bigfoot Pictures, Montauk Monster Pictures, Chupucabra Video: The Visually Unexplained"

"Montauk Monster Pictures Show Raccoon, Dog, Turtle... What?"

"Montauk Monster Predated by Moscow Monster"

******

Sources:

Gawker.com

DailyContributor.com

EastHamptonStar.com 

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article...html?cat=8

[Breaking News Breaking News]

'Montauk Monster' sighting on Southold beach

BY SOPHIA CHANG | [email protected]
    10:50 AM EDT, May 14, 2009

Montauk Monster II?

A report of a second Montauk Monster washing up on a Southold beach has conjured memories of the strange finding on the East End last summer. (http://www.montauk-monster.com / May 13, 2009)

It's back.

Just in time for summer, Long Island's latest fad-slash-biological freak show once again is in all of its bloated, pallid glory.

Reports of a Montauk Monster washing up on a Southold beach are circulating after the http://www.montauk-monster.com blog posted pictures and video last week of what looks like a beaked, four-legged animal's carcass lying in sand--much like the pictures of the other beaked, four-legged carcass that stirred up so much controversy last summer.

Nicky Papers, 24, a culinary school student from West Islip who runs the blog, said a couple from Southold contacted him after they saw the body on the Founders Landing Park shore last Wednesday.

He and a friend drove there and saw a three-foot long animal corpse with a pointy snout and hooves lying in the surf.

"It smelled horrible," Papers said. "It's like nothing I've ever seen before. I don't think the pictures do it justice."

Papers said the couple shoved the carcass with a stick into a white garbage bag and took it away. They later told him they'd put the carcass on ice at an undisclosed Southold location, Papers said.

Attempts to contact the Southold couple were unsuccessful, and Papers said he did not want to reveal their identity without their permission.

The tale of the original Montauk Monster gripped the East End last summer as international attention seized upon the mysterious animal body that purportedly washed up on a local beach. As the tale goes, three Montauk friends found the corpse last July on Ditch Plains Beach and snapped a picture of it.

Back then, rumors centered on stories about a dumped carcass from Plum Island's testing labs. Some claimed there could be a shady back story: Perhaps the creature was planted to promote an independent movie?

Now, according to the montauk-monster.com blog, the latest Montauk Monster has been updated and has acquired new baggage suitable for 2009.

"I've thought about the possibilities that this carcass may be carrying H1N1 influenza (The Swine Flu)," Papers writes.

But he admits he is "just as baffled as anybody else."

Papers said he didn't worry about skeptics and nonbelievers. "Whether people think this is old news, there's going to be people out there who are still going to be interested in the mysteries of science," he said.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/...?track=rss

[Breaking News Breaking News]

Montauk Monster take 2, sigh

Posted on: May 15, 2009 6:04 AM, by Darren Naish

Ever one to jump on a bandwagon, and with another 'mystery carcass' case still all too fresh on the Tet Zoo list of articles, I've decided to blog about this new 'Montauk monster' carcass. In case you've forgotten, back in July 2008 the global media went absolutely apeshit over a rotten raccoon carcass, informally dubbed the 'Montauk monster', and suggested by the uninformed to be some weird genetic experiment, a dead turtle without its shell (duh: THE SHELL IS THE RIBCAGE, IT CANNOT BE MAGICALLY DETACHED FROM THE REST OF THE BODY), or some sort of beaked dinosaur-monster. Yes, if you ever want to see how little people in general know about natural history and animal anatomy, show them a half-rotten carcass.

Anyway, the new carcass was discovered on May 5th 2009, this time at Southold, Long Island, New York, and thanks to everyone who has been emailing me about this, or linking to my previous article on the first carcass. As was the case for Montauk monster # 1, we're seeing completely retarded 'explanations' that betray a wholesale willingness to avoid doing the stuff that can be loosely termed 'doing research': you know, stuff like looking at books, googling, or going to the library or the museum...

So far, very little information is available. The carcass is mostly hairless, bloated, and not very large (though, as usual, no direct indication of scale has been provided). For starters, the carcass is - WITHOUT DOUBT - that of a quadrupedal mammal. A long, slim tail (perhaps two-thirds the length of the hindlimb) is present (it's visible in one of the photos). In the video (I'm showing the msnbc.com clip here, but a longer version is available on youtube), we're shown that the defleshed fingers are slim and stick-like. We also see a mostly de-fleshed skull: remember that the soft tissues of the head (starting with the snout) typically decompose first in rotting carcasses, and the hands and feet follow next. The skull of Montauk monster # 2 has a smoothly convex upper surface and a large, rounded orbit (= eye socket). When the skull is raised with a stick, we see that the animal has a broad palate, a relatively short snout, an alveolus (= socket) on the left side that clearly originally housed a large canine, and reasonably large molars. A screen-capture from the video (used in the composite image shown below) reveals the orbit, zygomatic arch (= bony bar that extends backwards from above the molars, under the eye, and attaches close to the ear region) and infraorbital foramen (= an opening on the side of the snout where nerves and blood vessels emerge).

All of these features demonstrate WITHOUT ANY DOUBT WHATSOEVER that the carcass is (again) that of a carnivoran (= a member of the mammalian clade Carnivora: the group that includes cats, hyenas, civets, dogs, bears, weasels, skunks, raccoons, seals etc.). It is not a dog, as it lacks the convex bony brow present in dog skulls. Instead... drum-roll.... it is ANOTHER RACCOON. Oh, what a surprise. In the adjacent composite, the skull of Montauk monster # 2 (at top; flipped horizontally) is compared with a raccoon skull. While they are not completely identical (the Montauk skull lacks the slight concavity present on the dorsal surface of the snout shown in the clean raccoon skull), these differences are well within individual variation (and might be due to perspective anyway) and the similarity is convincing. Case closed: definitely another raccoon.

Like the first Montauk monster, this case is crap, and driven by sensationalism and a desire to create a mystery where there isn't one. We do not identify carcasses by poking them with sticks and saying how weird they look: we have to, you know, make observations about anatomy and compare what we see with what is already known about other animals.

UPDATE: can you help to make a difference? Perhaps you can. As suggested in the comments (see below), it might be worth making the effort of going periodically to the 'Montauk Monster' website, and leaving a link to this post (i.e., the one you're reading right now at Tet Zoo) each and every time. As suggested by Ivan of The Lazy Lizard's Tales, maybe someone would eventually follow the link and learn something. Consider this a sort of public-outreach teach-people-about-basic-science thing.

http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/...2_sigh.php