Raystown Ray in the news again

Production company searching for Raystown lake monster

By Barbara Cowan, bcowan@altoonamirror.com

 A California-based production company has heard about the legend of a sea creature in Raystown Lake, referred to locally as Raystown Ray, and is coming to the area next month to investigate. A.J. D'Agostino, an associate producer with Base Productions of Burbank, said a team of 10 people will visit the area on?April 27 and 28 to spend time on the lake and gather information from people who think they may have seen the creature.Matt Price, executive director of the Huntingdon County Convention and Visitors Bureau, who has been in communication with Base, said the company is producing a six-episode show and dedicating half of one of the episodes to Raystown Ray. He said it may air on the SyFy Channel. A release from Base said the show, on the paranormal, is to be broadcast in June. "We are looking for people to be interviewed on the show," D'Agostino said. "Eyewitness accounts are the best ... people who have been near the lake or on the lake who would be willing to share their story. If they have photos or videos, that would be amazing."  Base Productions decided to investigate after viewing information on the Web site www.raystownray.com. The Web site was created five years ago for reporting sightings, photos and gathering information. "We saw the most recent photo of Raystown Ray and that looks pretty compelling," D'Agostino said. "We have a team of investigators who look at video clips and photos of things that are either aliens, strange creatures or ghosts." The investigation will focus on the Seven Points area, where a recent sighting of the sea monster was reported, she said. "This will be our first field investigation," she said. "We hope to find evidence." One witness on the Web site wrote, "We saw it from about 50 yards from us when it raised up, it's head moved from side to side. It made no sound. I'd say it was at least 20 feet long." Witnesses can post information on sightings by visiting the Web site and e-mailing their story or photo plus contact information. D'Agostino said witnesses should think about when and where they saw a creature, what they saw, what they heard, and what they thought about it. Price said the investigation will go beyond talking to eyewitnesses. "We've put them in touch with a local scuba diver and also with Seven Points Marina. We're assisting them with the dive and with the fishfinder equipment and I believe ... they are also talking with a fishing guide," Price said. Base Productions plans on being in the area for two days of production and Price said eyewitness interviews will be conducted on the back deck of the visitors center, which overlooks the lake. Base Productions also produces "Sport Science," which airs on Fox Sports Net, and A&E's justice series "Crime 360." Price said he's never seen Raystown Ray, but "if he exists, it certainly hasn't affected the ecosystem much, the fish are large, vegetation is plentiful, it hasn't disturbed swimmers." He welcomes the national exposure."It's an opportunity to get our area on national television," he said. 

Article source:http://www.altoonamirror.com/page/content.detail/id/528324.html

  

See also : http://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-sighting-of-raystown-lake-monster.html

 http://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2009/08/raystown-ray-lake-monster-hoax-or-fish.html

 And the site : www.raystownray.com.

Bigfoot DNA?

 Are We Closing in on Bigfoot? 

DNA evidence, amazing photos, increased sightings and new high-tech detection methods suggest that we may be close to discovering the truth about Bigfoot

In early April, 2001, British scientists made a startling announcement. After examining the DNA in a strand of hair thought to come from a Yeti - the Asian cousin to America's Bigfoot - scientists were unable to identify it as coming from any known animal.This astonishing discovery is the most recent peak of what has become a growing mountain of evidence that we share this planet with an as-yet undiscovered species - or perhaps several species - of bipedal primates. And whether they are a kind of ape or are more closely related to humans - or something in-between - is unknown. But this new scientific evidence combined with new detailed photos and an increasing number of compelling sightings holds the promise that we may be very close to solving the mystery.

The DNA Evidence

The great Himalayan mountain range lies on the border between India, Nepal and Tibet, which is now part of China. The existence of the Yeti has been known to the people of this region for centuries. The first reliable report of a sighting from a Westerner came in 1925 when N.A. Tombazi, a Greek photographer working as part of a British geological expedition, saw the creature from a distance of about 1,000 feet. Although he did not get a photo of the Yeti, he and other members of the expedition did find footprints. Over the years, many other stories of the Yeti surfaced, and in the West it became known popularly as "The Abominable Snowman." (For more on the history of Yeti sightings, see "Yeti: Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas".) The long black strand of hair examined by the British scientists was found on the bark of cedar tree in the Kingdom of Bhutan, a small country on the eastern side of the Himalayas. The tall, hairy creature is believed by many locals to inhabit the forests and mountains of Bhutan, where it is called the Migyur. The British were led to this particular tree by Sonam Dhendup, the kingdom's official Yeti hunter. Locals had found a mysterious piece of skin in the hollow of the cedar tree, which they think the creature might have called home. Carefully examining the area, the British scientists found fresh footprints just a few hours old. Inside the tree, they noted claw-like scratch marks and found several strands of the hair. Some of the hair was taken back to the UK for DNA testing. Bryan Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics at the Oxford Institute of Molecular Medicine and one of the world's leading experts on DNA analysis examined the hair. "We found some DNA in it," he said, "but we don't know what it is. It's not a human, not a bear not anything else we have so far been able to identify. It's a mystery and I never thought this would end in a mystery. We have never encountered DNA that we couldn't recognize before." Several Bhutanese have actually seen the Yeti. Druk Sherrik, a former member of the country's royal guard, told the British expedition, "It was huge. It must have been nine feet tall. The arms were enormous and hairy. The face was red with a nose like a chimpanzee." The Yeti has also been captured on video in the so-called Snow Walker footage. In 1996, two hikers making their way through the mountain snows of Nepal captured video of a hairy, upright walking creature trudging up the side of a hill. The video has yet to be proved or disproved.But the DNA test has proved that there is an unknown creature out there. What kind of creature that hair belongs to is unknown, but when one considers it along with the footprints and the eyewitness sightings, the case for a previously unknown ape or hominid is strengthened. The DNA is likely to inspire new expeditions to find the Yeti.

Read more here: http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa040901a.htm

Lake Creatures of Quebec

Misiganebic a lake creature with a horse's head, or sometimes described as having a snake or eel like head is said to exist in several lakes in the Quebec area. It has been reported in at least eight lakes including Blue-Sea, Cedars, Bitobi, Baskatong Reservoir, Lake Desert and Lake Pocknock.. There is also an intriguingly named "Snake Lake" nearby. According to locals Blue Sea lake, Cedars lake and Bitobi lake are interconnected. The legend about Misiganebic started with the indigenous people of the area.

Blue Sea Lake is about 90kilometers (56 miles ) north of Gatineau. It is known for its crystal clear water .The story goes that a monstrous snake-like animal with a horse head lived in the lake and was by several people between 1913 and 1930. It was said to be very long and a very fast swimmer. The next report of it’s appearance was in 1980 in the Baskatong Reservoir, located further north. This change of venue was thought to be due to the increase of tourism around the lake and the increased use of motorboats and noise.

The creature was also said to have been seen in Lake Williams in 1928 but looking slightly different. While on a camping trip to the lake, Rev. A. D. MacKinnon and his family came upon a huge, horny-pelted creature which they described as resembling a hippopotamus. The animal, which appeared to be both aquatic and able to move on land, crawled about in the muddy, shallow waters near shore, browsing in the mud and snapping at passing fish. Mr. MacKinnon and his party merely gazed at it from a safe distance and then it went under the surface of the water. It was known that huge sturgeons inhabited the lake but Rev MacKinnon insisted that the strange creature he saw was not a fish. He said it wasn’t an actual hippopotamus but looked like one. The reverend had been in charge of the Union church there for many years and his truthfulness was considered unquestionable.( N.B. This may have been a different creature)
Lake Saint-Jean is also said to be the occasional home to the snake head monster.
In 1880, a snake "as thick as a telegraph pole " colour "dark green", was seen between the lighthouse and the shore. Since 1975, with a peak in 1980, local newspapers reported persistent observations of a "monster in the lake.
In (as far as I can establish, I had to translate this from French and I am out of practice) 2000 ,a Mr. Geoffroy and his son , saw an unidentified animal from the edge of Lake Brochu. It made a wave, a convex shape in the water as it swam .Mr Geoffroy’s engine on his boat was 120 horse power so he set off in pursuit. He was going 35 miles per hour (56km / h) but could not catch up with it. . He said it was not of fish under the surface because it went too fast and a fish would not cause the wake he saw. The claim was that it
was a prehistoric beast stuck there as the Gouin dam basin was formerly open to the sea .
Mocking Lake is also located in Quebec, Canada. Local villagers say that a twelve(4 metres) to eighteen feet( 6 metres) long creature lives in the lake with a saw tooth shaped fin on it’s back. A grey coloured creature thirty-five feet( 11.1 metres) long was seen by Donat Lavaseur.( no date) and a Mr. and Mrs. Gage saw a large creature come up out of the water when they were fishing. They saw it’s head and nine feet ( 3 metres) of it’s back. ( again no date)

My translation may be a bit off in places but it appears Quebec is home to several or one travelling snake head lake creature plus a hippopotamus type creature. If anyone has any information please post a comment.

Also this great post appeared today about a tunnel monster :
A reader forwarded this account printed in the Toronto Sunday Sun on March 25th, 1979:
It was a warm summer’s day in August of 1978 when a Toronto area man had an experience with a strange creature that would forever change his life. Read more at :

http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2010/03/toronto-tunnel-monster-toronto-ontario.html

Michigan Lake Monster Captured?

US Navy Captures Lake Michigan  Monster Posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008

By Dallas Commagreens

The US Navy captured a 140-foot monster in Lake Michigan on September 16 and a secret Pentagon photograph proves it! The picture clearly shows a pair of Navy divers cautiously approaching the beast just minutes after it was immobilized in a gigantic steel net. And while it is not yet known what the Navy plans to do with the monster, sources say that every effort will be made to keep it alive while researchers try to figure out what it is, how it got into Lake Michigan and if there are more like it. “I don’t want to sound like a gawking tourist but the Loch Ness monster is nothing, and I do mean nothing, compared to this, “declared marine biologist Richard Clarke, who cited Pentagon sources and documents when he blew the lid off the capture of the beast at a news conference in Washington, DC. “The Navy spent six months trying to capture this thing,” he continued, “and the big question now is what the hell did they catch? The monster looks like a dinosaur but there are several important distinctions. “For one thing, dinosaurs were exceedingly stupid but this lake monster apparently has an intelligence rivaling that of a dog or a horse. It also has lungs and gills, which enable it to breathe in or out of water at will. “One of the more intriguing aspects of this case is why nobody has reported seeing the monster before, he added. “Then again, people may have seen it but were too embarrassed or afraid to talk.” Pentagon and Navy spokesmen declined to discuss Clarke’s report, but in a puzzling concession to repeated and often angry questioning from newsmen, explained that they were unable to comment because “national security interests may be at stake .”The expert himself said he got his information from Pentagon sources. According to the documents, Navy vessels sighted the monster while on a training mission in Lake Michigan late last spring. As a matter of routine, they scanned the area with sonar and confirmed the presence of “a large moving object, identity unknown.”  Portions of the report had been deleted by Pentagon censors before Clarke obtained a copy for himself. But the documents clearly stated that the Navy tracked the “object” for 72 hours before it surfaced three miles west of South Fox Island in the north central sector of the lake. “Additional vessels and divers were dispatched from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center to continue tracking the creature and within six weeks, the Navy was secretly dragging an unspecified area of the lake with a massive steel net,” said Clarke .“The monster eluded capture until September 16. My sources say it is now being held in an underwater cage while the Pentagon and Navy decide what to do with it.” The monster weighs an estimated 35 tons and is said to be easting as much as a ton of raw fish and meat a day, said the expert. There was initially some concern that the creature would struggle free of the net. But it calmed down considerably after Navy divers dosed it with massive quantities of a powerful animal tranquilizer and is now resting comfortable on the bottom of the lake. “The monster’s head is as big as a station wagon and the sharp, white fangs in its mouth would seem to answer a lot of questions about its heritage and temperament, which are being described as ‘prehistoric and foul’,” said Dr. Clarke.“The Pentagon is definitely trying to keep a lid on this,” he added. “But a story of this magnitude can’t be kept under wraps forever.”

Source: http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/2614/us-navy-captures-lake-michigan-monster/

I was going to keep this for April 1st but thought it would give you all a laugh on a Sunday and lighten up the day. 

The search for "Bownessie" continues

Hunt for Bownessie By Karl Steel

Over the years, hundreds of investigations to find the beast have proved unsuccessful and the notion that something so large can go undetected for so long have, for most people, rendered it a modern day myth, a quirky tale, a ploy to bring in tourists .So, when news emerged of a similar sighting on Lake Windermere in 2006, people were quick to dismiss it in the same way. Millions of people travel up and down the 11-mile stretch of water each year – how can nobody have seen anything before now? Then in February 2007, professional photographer Linden Adams snapped pictures of a large bow wave moving along the lake, dipping and circling in the calm water, from a viewpoint around 2.5km away and more than 1,000ft up on Gummers How. “Even though I was a long way away, I could see that it wasn’t just a freak wave or a swan or anything like that,” says Linden. “It looked like it had the head of a Labrador, only a lot bigger. “Compared with boats moored nearby it appeared to be about 50ft in length. ”When he saw the pictures that he’d taken, he knew that what he’d seen was an important find. He sent them off for forensic examination, and to this day they have confounded experts. He labelled his discovery ‘Bownessie’, in reference to its Scottish counterpart, and the legend has grown from there. “I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of it being a ‘monster fish’, in that the sheer size of it is beyond all record,” he says. “There are so many questions to be answered like how it got there or, if it grew in the lake, what can it be eating? “I am really keen to find out what it is. There is no way something of that size can have swum into the lake – it has either been put there or it has grown there. “Any scientist that’s seen my photos have agreed that there is an animate being of considerable size that is living in the lake.” In fact, there have been reports of a ‘monster’ living in the lake dating back to the 1950s, but it is only since these images emerged that the notion has begun to be taken seriously. So far there have been public sightings from a number of different points along Windermere. Video footage taken by a local journalist even hit national headlines when it was featured on Sky News. Reports often describe a dark mass, anywhere between 12ft and 70ft in length. One of the most detailed encounters happened in July last year when hotelier Thomas Noblett was swimming near Wray Castle – the lake’s deepest point at around 219ft – at around 7am one morning and he felt a wave that he described as having “the force of a submarine”. Andrew Tighe, who was accompanying Thomas in a support boat alongside, said that the wave came completely out of the blue. He says: “The lake was just so flat as it normally is at that time of morning – no traffic on the lake at all – and a huge wave came and swamped the boat and swamped over the top of Tom while he was swimming, to which Tom got out of his swimming stroke and said, ‘what the hell was that?’. “Then all of a sudden another one came and just swamped over the top of the boat, swamped myself, and again, covered Thomas.” Andrew said that it was almost as if a boat was travelling down the centre of the lake, but there was nothing in sight. A few days earlier, the pair had dismissed a radio story about Bownessie as nonsense, but following his encounter he believes that there is definitely something abnormal living in the lake. “Me and Thomas just laughed-off anything in (the radio programme), and with us being in the lake every day, we hadn’t experienced anything,” he says. “What it is, I don’t know. “All I know is what I saw on that day.” The increasing interest in the mystery surrounding Bownessie attracted the attentions of paranormal investigator Dean ‘Midas’ Maynard. The Durham-based celebrity psychic was enthralled by Linden Adams’ photo and felt that it was something worth looking into. He says: “Being a paranormal investigator, I’ve got a very open mind to these kind of things - that’s what I do. “From the witness accounts, I’m 99 per cent sure there’s something in Windermere that can’t be explained.” Dean decided to become actively involved in the search, and along with Linden, Thomas and Andrew, set out on an investigation with sonar equipment for the ITV1 series The Lakes to see what they could find. Although that proved fruitless, plans are afoot to conduct a more scientific search later this year. In July, the group will have access to the state-of-the-art DIDSON (Dual-frequency Identification Sonar) high-definition imaging unit, and it is hoped that this will provide inconclusive evidence of whether Bownessie exists or not. It will be the most detailed survey of Lake Windermere ever undertaken, and with the backing of the Freshwater Biological Association, the research will also look at the level of fish stocks in the lake, and if there is enough to sustain a creature of such reputed size. Dean says: “We hope just to get evidence that it’s here. We don’t have to do anything with it if it’s in here, we want to leave it alone. “We want to verify accounts from people that have seen something and just clear up that they’re not going mad. “So far we’ve not had sightings from any ‘crack-pots’, they’ve all been from respected people. “There’s no point in scare-mongering, we just believe that there is something in there that shouldn’t be in there, or has grown to such a size that it is being labelled a monster.” Source:http://www.nwemail.co.uk/home/love-life/hunt-for-bownessie-1.685945

Strange Creatures seen off coast of Hull UK

Harold T Wilkins has written a lot of Fortean books in one called Monster and Mysteries (James Pike 1972) he told a story of a sea monster seen off Hull UK.

Unfortunately it had no date. : (My paraphrasing here as I no longer have a copy of the book))

A seaman on board a ship heading for Hull saw something strange in the water. He described it as 30 feet(10 metres) by 4 feet( 1.1 metres), slimy black in colour with a big eel like head. It was lying on top of the water. The seaman was an old sea dog of 40 years and said it wasn’t a whale or a shark and were he to see it again he would retire from the sea and remain on land.

In 1927 a steamship travelling from Hamburg to Hull ran into fog as it sailed along the East Yorkshire coast. As the fog started to lift the person in the wheelhouse( presumably the captain) saw in front of the ship what looked like a 10-12 feet( 3.1- 4 metres) mast sticking out of the water. He rushed to alert the engine room to move astern and as he did so he looked back and the mast moved and went around to the port side. The object then reappeared with what looked like a second mast curved around like an elephants trunk of huge girth. The passengers on board saw what appeared to be a black coloured body as it rose higher and then it submerged.

I have been unable to find out anymore about these sightings but there is a Maritime Museum in Hull so I will try and contact them to see if they have any information. If anyone else knows anything please post a comment

Hull is up or down the coast depending on which direction you come from , from Skegness where strange sea creature sightings were reported .see blog:

http://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/search?q=skegness

.

sometimes I despair

There has apparently been a new crypto blog set up. Great I thought and went to investigate. I love reading other people's stuff and seeing their ideas and how they see things. Instead I find a blog set up by someone calling them selves" highland tiger".( I am sorry but if that is meant to disguise who you are it failed miserable, most people know who you are) . The blog was set up with the sole intent of name calling and false accusations against other cryptozoologists, especially it seems the CFZ organisation. Firstly it is cowardly to try and disguise yourself and then throw insults and is really immature and purile. (But then I would have expected no less of this person so should not be surprised). It also smacks of sour grapes... what happened did CFZ refuse to publish your stuff or not acknowledge your contributions? Again immature behaviour of the spitting your dummy out variety. And then we get to the nub of things as far as I am concerned. I don't care particularly what you write Mr HT , I am not that interested with your petty squabbles but what I do object to is that it brings the whole cryptozoological community down and makes it look totally unprofessional for you to behave in this way. Having read your rants I would like to point out that I do have academic qualifications, as does my daughter and we have both contributed to CFZ blogs. What are your academic qualifications I wonder that you can cast aspirations at me? I have 7 lots of letters after my name and they don't spell B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T. I just despair that people like you turn the cryptozoological community into a bear pit and it is people like you that made me decide to keep a low profile all these years. Grow up and behave like an adult. admit who you are , be open about any accusations you have and show us the proof. Until then all you do is bring us all into disrepute and sicken off and scare away those who have a genuine interest . I am disgusted and appalled at someone who claims to be genuine seeker for the answers but only seeks to mar the reputation of others.

caution over new find

Possible new human ancestor found in Siberia

Wednesday, March 24 06:15 pm Reuters Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

Genetic material pulled from a pinky finger bone found in a Siberian cave shows a new and unknown type of pre-human lived alongside modern humans and Neanderthals, scientists reported on Wednesday. The creature, nicknamed "Woman X" for the time being, could have lived as recently as 30,000 years ago and appears only distantly related to modern humans or Neanderthals, the researchers reported. "It really just looked like something we had never seen before," Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told a telephone briefing. "It was a sequence that looked something like humans but really quite different." Writing in Nature, Krause and colleagues said they sequenced DNA from the mitochondria, a part of the cell, which is passed down virtually intact from a woman to her children. They compared it to DNA from humans, Neanderthals and apes. The sequence indicates the hominin's line diverged about a million years ago from the line that gave rise to both humans and Neanderthals and that split about 500,000 years ago. That makes it younger than Homo erectus, the pre-human that spread out of Africa to much of the world about 1.9 million years ago. "It is some new creature that has not been on our radar screen so far," said Svaante Paabo, a colleague of Krause's who specializes in analyzing ancient DNA. And it would have lived near to both modern humans and Neanderthals. "There were at least three ... different forms of humans in this area 40,000 years ago," Paabo said. Krause and Paabo are careful not to name the creature a new species just yet. They are now working to sequence nuclear DNA -- the DNA that makes up most of the genetic code, which will tell a great deal more about "Woman X".

The genetic sequence tells scientists little about what the creature would have looked like or whether it interacted with other humans living in the Altai mountains of Siberia, where the pinky finger bone was found. The work, done using a DNA sequencer made by Illumina Ltd, suggests a new way is opening to identify the ancestors of humanity. Krause and Paabo had only a tiny fragment of bone to work with and cannot reconstruct a skeleton in the time-honoured manner of most palaeontologists. But there may be more there. The cold, dry conditions of the Altai mountains preserve the DNA. Stone tools also have been found in the area, as well as the bones of woolly mammoths but only tantalizing fragments of human bone and teeth. Researchers have sequenced DNA from mammoths frozen in Siberia and the same team has sequenced DNA from Neanderthals. Paabo and Krause said it is theoretically possible the creature is related to another potential third species of human -- Homo floresiensis, nicknamed "hobbit" -- which lived on an island in modern-day Indonesia about 17,000 years ago.The team has tried without success to get DNA from hobbit bones. Most skeletons of pre-humans have been found in warm places such as Africa, but hot, wet conditions break down’

Source:http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100324/tsc-uk-human-species-011ccfa.html

There has been a lot of excitement about this small bone in view of were it was found. Could this be the Siberian bigfoot ? I think we need to remember that it is only one small bone and that it will take time to analyse and being so small it may be impossible to get a lot of data from it. Though we all hope that it turns out to be something new , maybe a possible ape/human hybrid(It has been speculated that at the time of the split in the hominins line that apes and humans still sometimes mated), we mustn’t get our hopes too high.

Bali's own Nessie?

This video said to be of an unknown aquatic creature has appeared on the internet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVTpt5LQFqU

Could it be a seal or a log or something new?

Lake Massawippi creature reappears?

I posted this last year and asked if there were any more sightings:

A Quebec innkeeper claims to have picture proof that the legendary monster of Lake Massawippi exists. Although it doesn't enjoy the status of Ogopogo -- the country's most famous water monster said to inhabit Lake Okanagan in the south central B.C. interior -- "Whippy" has been alive in local monster folklore. Townspeople have been reporting sightings of the elusive creature for generations in the peaceful, picturesque lake nestled in Quebec's Eastern Townships, near Sherbrooke. Jeff Stafford, owner of the Ripplecove Inn, showed photos of what he claimed are "Whippy" to CFCF News reporter Rob Lurie. Stafford said he was given the photos last week by a tourist, along with a story of how the alligator-like creature surfaced from the depths of the Massawippi and treated him to an extended view. The series of blurry photos show a far shot of an oddly-shaped protuberance sticking out of the water ."This thing was floating on top like a large crocodile or large water snake," Stafford told CFCF. He said, according to the tourist, that Whippy was 10 feet long, and had its head stuck out of the water for several minutes. "We were blown away," said Stafford, who didn't doubt the tourist's story for one second. There are many stories of monster sightings in these parts, reports Lurie. Nearby Lake Mephremagog has "Memphre"; Lake Champlains' has "Champ." But with this latest sighting on the Massawippi, the legend of Whippy has pulled ahead of the others. Florent Hebert, who's been guiding tours on the lake for 23 years, said he's seen a lot of strange things that he just can't explain. He said he's been trying to convince people of Whippy's existence, and that these photos finally prove he's not crazy. "I feel much better, because no one believes in the stories I've been telling about the lake," he told CFCF News. Scientists have explained that these waters are inhabited by some very large fish. At almost 500 feet deep, Lake Massawippi is home to many monster sturgeons. Fishermen have spotted fish more than seven feet long in the lake. Vancouver author John Kirk, whose specialty is investigating unknown animals, guesses the mystery creature in Stafford's photo "could be a form of catfish." "But it doesn't have the profile to be a classical lake monster," he told CTV News. Stafford said whatever it was, it didn't act very fish-like. "It was on the surface of the water for about 15 minutes -- that's not fish behavior," he said.With a report from CTV's Rob Lurie source;http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1124491024189_22/

Then I found this today:

Lac Massawippi

Lac Massawippi is located in the Eastern Townships near Sherbrooke. It is a popular lake with tourist with many cottages and inn’s in the region. The lake is also known to perhaps harbor a lake creature of some sorts, dubbed Whippi.While not as well known as other nearby lake creatures such as Memphre in Lac Memphremagog or Champ in Lake Champlain, Whippi sightings are still reported and in 2005, was apparently photographed.The lake is not extremely large but is quite deep. Could Whippi possibly inhabit it’s waters?

Update: March 2007 We received the following via email:

Saw Wippi in April of 1984 on opening of fishing season while out with another adult and my 12 year old sun. We clearly saw the creature with its head out of the water.Our thanks to the witness. Further information shall be published if possible.Source: http://www.quebec.pararesearchers.org/html/lac_massawippi.html

So it appears Whippi is alive and well, does anyone have any more information? I still think the photo looks like a dolphin’s nose or something similar, what do you think?

For those interested in Canadian Lake Monsters here is a clip with eye witness testimony about Ogopogo.

http://archives.cbc.ca/science_technology/unexplained/topics/1462-9706/

Here be sea serpents and big cats

Everyone who reads this blog knows about my love of sea serpent and lake monster stories so I was pleased to see an excellent article on sea serpents in the Fortean Times:

The Golden Age of Sea Serpents

Sailors, scientists and 19th-century monsters of the deep

By Mark Greener March 2010

An extract:

The 19th century was the golden age for sea serpents. Many of the most vivid and credible reports of “sea monsters” come from 19th-century sailors – sometimes in such detail, with such eloquence, with such verisimilitude, that only the most cyn­ical sceptic can dismiss them as the products of overactive imaginations or hoaxes. Victorian scientific journals and magazines regularly carr­ied reports of sea serpents being shot at, captured and even – from a certain point of view – being turned into knife handles. Yet around the turn of the 20th century, the number of reports began to decline.

The 19th-century scientific literat­ure offers ‘rational’ explanations for sea monsters. Most sightings remain unexplained zoologically, even with the benefit of hindsight. However, many explanations smack of desperat­ion, as field observations threatened academic Victorian biologists’ ordered worldview. As Robert Paddle notes in his excellent book on the thylacine, “prevailing constructions, as outlined by the ‘great men’ of science, are powerful [..] and not easily overturned by persons of supposedly less scientific consequence, no matter how accurate their observations in the field may be”. [1]
If all else failed, scientists could dismiss each sighting as misidentification augmented by a “credulous” mariner’s fear and imagination: a view that is not only patronising – partly a product of 19th-century class prejudice – but zoologically counterproductive.
Nevertheless, and in spite of such scientific hubris, some Victorian explan­ations stand the test of time, showing that monsters sometimes yield to cryptozoological scrutiny. In particular, mariners recognised some leviathans many years before zoologists.
"MUCH RESPECTABLE TESTIMONY"
The 19th-century sea serpent stories have all the hallmarks of classic fortean phen­omena: numerous reports indicating that reliable witness saw something, but little hard evidence to prove a physical existence. Even the generally sceptical Scientific American admitted to “much respectable testimony” that seemed to sugg­est that something lurked in the seas. However, the journal added, “[I]t is singular enough that no one connected with the department of Zoological science has ever seen one, nor is there any bones or fragments among any of the collections, in Europe or America.” [2]
Nevertheless, the scientific literature from the 18th and 19th centuries contains numerous examples of contemporary and historical sea serpent sightings, often from impeccable witnesses. For example, on 6 July 1734, Poul Egede, the son of a famous Danish-Norwegian missionary, saw a “most dreadful monster” off the coast of Greenland. The sighting became one of the most famous in cryptozoology. In his diaries, recollections and his father’s reports, Egede states that the head of the “enormously big creature” reached to – or was, in some accounts, higher than – the yardarm. The body was as thick as, and three to four times longer than, the ship. The beast had a long pointed nose, blew like a whale and swam using big broad flippers. “Shell work” or “scales” covered the rough, wrinkled skin. The rear resembled a serpent. When it submerged, it lifted itself backwards and then raised its tail from the water a ship’s length from the body. [3]

Read the rest here:

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/3121/the_golden_age_of_sea_serpents.html

And to finish off another excellent article:

Legends and sightings of big cats in the Appalachians

http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2010/03/big-cat-tales-from-appalachians-to.html

Lake monsters in Charleston Provincial Park Canada.

Charleston Lake is situated in Canada 30miles north of Kingston. It is approximately 9 miles long and about 4 miles wide with a depth of over 450 feet( 150 metres) in some places. There is said to be a strange creature living in the lake nicknamed Charlie by the residents. It has been recorded as being seen for over a 100 years.

In 1897 Noah Shook claimed he was pursued by a large, hissing creature.

In 1947 three fisherman reported that they had seen a dinosaur type creature swimming in Tallow Bay Rock.

In 1994, Mr. H while visiting the place his father’s ashes were scattered on the lake , saw what he described as being a large rain slick in the water. "I had never seen any thing in the like that before" he said.

In 1997, a couple travelling at night claimed they saw waves that were 3 to 4 feet high, caused by something in the water. There wasn’t any wind and the water was calm and there were no boats in the area.

Charlie is not the only strange creature in the area:

There have also been reports of a snake like creature, living in Red Horse Lake located in nearby Lyndhurst. The creature is said to be greenish black, a head like a horse with small breathing tubes on its head and it about 60(20 metres) to 80 feet ( 26 metres) long.Fisherman have reported seeing a long black body in the water

In the 1970s, an unnamed woman , said she was leaning over her small row boat in order to grab a bullfrog for her pond when a creature "just popped its head right out of the water and looked at me!" The woman screamed from fright and the creature dived beneath the water leaving foaming bubbles. The woman left immediately.

Both lakes are in The Charleston Provincial Park. The park also provides habitat for the rare black rat snake which is also the largest snake found in the area. The Black Rat Snake (Elaphe obsoleta) sometimes called a pilot black snake is a non-venomous species . It prefers wooded areas and is known for having the ability to climb the trunk of large mature trees . It is known to reach lengths of 8 feet( 2.6 metres) but one was found that was 9.1 ( 3metres)feet long.

Now what if it fell from a tree into a lake? That would explain the hissing creature that chased Mr Shook all those years ago. It may also account for some of the other sightings but not all of them. Just a thought for Monday.

A piece of the history of the Loch Ness monster hunt

I found this excellent article about Frank Searle:

What lies beneath

Published Date: 04 September 2005 By LIESE SPENCER

MONSTER-HUNTERS are an endangered species at Loch Ness these days, but back in the 1970s its shores bristled with schoolchildren, hippies, students and renegade scientists all hoping to catch a glimpse of the world's last living dinosaur. Among them, though, one hunter in particular stood out. Frank Searle first appeared at the loch in 1969. No one knew where he came from - or where he went when he disappeared 14 years later - but in between, he became almost as famous as the creature itself.

From the start, Searle was different from the rest. While they lived in casual communes, sharing food and ideas at the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, Frank set up camp on the other side of the loch, alone. While they scuba-dived and kept a 24-hour surface watch, to no avail, Frank quickly put together an album of Nessie shots from his look-out in the woods. Monster-hunters who had spent hours vainly raking the waters with cameras and sonar could only look on in frustration as his grainy images of slender-necked, hump-backed beasties were splashed across the press. Who was he? He was born in London's East End and had lost a leg in the army. That was all anybody knew. Like the loch, Searle did not give up his secrets easily. This wasn't to say that he was a loner, or disliked attention. If you were interested in the monster and took his work seriously, he would have a lot of time for you. In the makeshift information centre he built, he would spend hours talking to curious schoolchildren. But there was a darker side to Searle too. If anyone doubted the veracity of his research or the authenticity of his photographs, he would fly into a violent rage. As time went on, Searle's pictures weren't all that began to attract attention. He regularly advertised for 'Girl Fridays' to help him with his work. Lieve Peten, a Belgian student, was 24 when she moved into his caravan. Frank was in his 50s. With a regular supply of young women to keep him company, clear water to bathe in, fresh salmon for supper and a growing reputation as a Nessie expert, it was a nice life beside the loch, and Searle continued camping there even in winter - when most hunters went home and temperatures fell to -17¼C. But when a rival exhibition centre opened and the publication of his second book was axed amid accusations of slander (the first had been pulled because of plagiarism), his world began to crumble.

A vocal sceptic of Searle's photographs, scientist Adrian Shine, had been described by the author as "the most accomplished liar ever to have trod the shores of Loch Ness". Soon after he had successfully petitioned the publishers to withdraw the book, Shine and his research team were the victims of a botched petrol-bombing as they slept on the beach. Searle told the police he had been painting his caravan at the time. A few days later, he disappeared. The caravan he had lived in for so long was kicked into the water - a taste of what would happen to his reputation in subsequent years. Although a version of Searle resurfaced in the 1996 film Loch Ness, played by Keith Allen, the man himself was never seen or heard of again. He simply vanished.

When producer-director Andrew Tullis first began to research Searle's story for Channel 4, nobody would talk about him. "What Frank did was buried by the people who stayed at the loch," he says, "because they didn't like his methods. They didn't think he had helped their cause one bit." Intrigued, the director decided to make a film "not about the Loch Ness Monster or the monster-hunters, as such, but about this man who came into their midst and mucked things up". With black-and-white snapshots and flickering, colour-saturated cine-film, his documentary is an elegiac evocation of the monster rush of the 1970s. Grinning students with heavy haircuts zip themselves into wetsuits. Schoolkids in flares lie in the grass, scrutinising the water through binoculars. It's all a great adventure.

Thanks to its extraordinary depth, the 23-mile-long loch holds more fresh water than all the lakes and rivers in England and Wales combined. "I personally don't believe that there is a prehistoric sea-serpent in there," says Tullis, "but I think that if you do believe in it then it does exist. It kind of works like that." The monster is an excuse for science geeks to invent new toys and try them out. It's a licence to dream, drop out, live in a commune, or idle away a summer or two in a place of outstanding beauty. Preparing for another dawn dive, those 1970s monster-hunters look like they're having the time of their lives. Although he, too, looks happy in his photos, Searle sticks out among the long-haired hippies with their fledgling beards. With his short-back-and-sides and Clark Gable moustache, he's a figure from another generation: a great white hunter, an adventurer. Rather than sharing the excitement of the chase, though, Searle's caddish grin suggests that he wants to bag some renown for himself. Patched together from dinosaur postcard cut-outs and photos of logs, Searle's fakes won him that, for a while. But by claiming the monster as his own, he upset the delicate imaginative ecosystem of Loch Ness. No longer could people project what they wanted on to the watery black hole. Worse, if they questioned what Searle saw there, he would threaten to kill them. There's no denying that the man was regarded as a bit of a loon - especially in later years, when he also began photographing UFOs over the loch. But it's a mistake to dismiss him entirely. As well as attracting huge interest in the area and an influx of tourists, his evocative hoaxes, with their blurry humps curving out of the water, have forever shaped our image of Nessie. The workmanship may have been poor, but the imagination behind them was not. "He stood by his photographs," says Tullis. "Even though he had faked them, he was utterly convinced they were genuine." And if he didn't fit in with the hippies living on the loch in the monster-hunting heyday of the 1970s, Searle wasn't entirely without their innocence and optimism. He told one schoolgirl he met that he had 'professional monster hunter' as his occupation in his passport. Any such official documentation proved hard to find for Tullis. "Nothing he ever reported about himself has been validated," sighs the director. "And he didn't appear to have any relations. Lieve, the Belgian Girl Friday, did ask him once if he had any children, and he said he had, out of wedlock, and had named them all David. But I don't know where these children might be, if they do exist." As well as bringing Nessie to life in the popular imagination, Searle created his own powerful personal myth. Incredibly, the director did eventually trace him, but many of his secrets will never be revealed. Searle died earlier this year - a frail old man, alone in a Lancashire bedsit. However, his legacy is a lasting one, and Nessie's public profile owes more to this charismatic monster hunter than anyone else

Source: Scotland On Sunday : http://news.scotsman.com/lochnessmonster/What-lies-beneath.2658421.jp

The sentence saying that his caravan was kicked into the water tells you a lot about the attitude to Frank. It is the reason I always kept to myself and rarely mixed with the other so called "Monster Hunters" . Despite what they all say about him Frank brought a lot of people and publicity to the area which helped publicise their efforts as well as his own. I think now Frank is dead they should stop assassinating him and leave him in peace. the story is well documented, every one knows what he was like , there is no need to continue a campaign against a dead man. Accept him for what he was , a product of the times who was part of the scene at the Loch and who brought something to the Loch in his own way.

New Rash of Bigfoot Sightings

New rash of Bigfoot sightings reported across Fayette County

March 14, 2010 By: DAVE ZUCHOWSKI

Herald Standard

Is it the power of the pen, the power of suggestion or the promise of anonymity that produced the latest rash of reports of Bigfoot sightings in Fayette County? An article about a Bigfoot sighting north of Uniontown by a woman who wished to remain anonymous was published in August. Her account was investigated by members of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society and researcher Stan Gordon of Greensburg, perhaps best known for his investigation into an alleged 1965 UFO crash in Kecksburg in Westmoreland County. Following the publication of the article, Eric Altman, director of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society, reports that he has received phone calls about eight additional Bigfoot sightings in Fayette County, four of which were clustered around Dunbar. "We also had a fifth second-hand report of a teen boy who is alleged to have seen a creature following him through the woods in the Dunbar area while he rode his quad," said Altman, 39, of Jeannette. "The boy is said to be so shook up by the incident that he doesn't want to be interviewed and was so frightened he won't go back to the area." Altman claims that Fayette County seems to be quite an active area for Bigfoot sightings, based on the inordinate number of calls he has received over the past six months. Besides the Dunbar sightings, two have been reported in the Jumonville area, one in Confluence and one in Connellsville. "Since the name of the witness in the newspaper account was kept confidential, I feel that people experiencing the same phenomena are now more comfortable and are coming forth to tell their stories," he said When conducting his research, Altman first interviews the witness on the phone, claiming that, over the years, he has become quite adept at determining if they're telling the truth. After trying to get as much information as he can, he then sets up a face-to-face meeting, preferably at the location of the sighting. "In a person-to-person meeting, I can read a lot from a witness' body language, eye contact and facial expressions," he said. The latest sighting report came from Heath Landman of Dunbar, who said he doesn't mind revealing his identity and claims he and his son, Heath Nickolas Jr., 20, saw "something" crossing the road in front of them about 35 to 40 yards away as they were driving on Ferguson Road in Dunbar at 9:15 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 31."The creature was walking at a fast pace on two feet, stood about 6 feet 3 inches tall and had a cone-shaped head," said Landman. "It was moving at a good clip without running, got across the road in three steps, then headed up an embankment and into a thicket. The next thing I knew, I heard my son say, "My god, Dad, what was that?" In a state of shock, Landman turned his car around, headed for home and called his three brothers on the phone. They, along with two nephews, later went with the Landmans to the site where the creature was spotted. After exploring the area, one brother found pieces of hair stuck on brier and a nephew took photos of footprints in the snow, which were shown to Altman during his subsequent investigation. "The hair found at the site is now protected in a container," said Altman. "We have contacts across the country who can conduct lab tests to try to match the hair to that of known species. We can also do DNA tests on the sample." Another incident took place on Sept. 23 in the mountains near Dunbar. A mother and daughter out for a drive stopped at a pipeline to take in the view and heard a rustling noise in the brush below. Thinking it might be a bear or a deer, they later saw that it was an upright creature, very muscular and tall, Altman recounted. "They reported that the creature got to within 150 feet, and just walked away without looking at them or threatening them in any way," said Altman, who met with the witnesses the following morning. "While hiking around the vicinity of the sighting, we discovered a large 19-inch, foot-shaped impression in very hard ground and an area where the brush had been trampled underfoot." While investigating yet another sighting report in the Dunbar area, Altman discovered a deer kill that had been eaten away until only the head and hide remained, as well as a 3-by-10-foot lean-to type structure in the area. One unusual sighting at the end of July involved a woman who claims to have spotted two creatures just outside Dunbar - one a smaller one eating on some blackberries and a much larger one estimated to be about 10 feet tall. "There have been several reports of multiple sightings in other parts of the state," said Altman. "Many claim that the creatures have large dark eyes and range in size from 7 to 10 feet, are muscular and bulky and have a variety of hair color." With the recent snowfall, Altman is hoping that people in the area come across unusual or revelatory footprints. Since the recent snowfall, members of the Bigfoot Society have gone back to sighting areas in search of footprints five or six times -- but have found no additional evidence. "We encourage anyone who's experienced a Bigfoot sighting or who has information on the subject to phone us at 724-516-6344 or file a sighting report on our Web site www.pabigfootsociety.com," said Altman. "We keep the names and personal information of witnesses confidential and promise to take their reports seriously." Source: http://www.heraldstandard.com/news_detail/article/1631/2010/march/14/new-rash-of-bigfoot-sightings-reported-across-fayette-county

A site about Pennsylvania bigfoot sightings including the bloggers own experiences:

http://blogsquatcher.blogspot.com/2010/03/western-pa-is-experiencing-spate-of.html

Howick falls creature-hoax or living dinosaur?

I found this in my archives and thought it might be worth investigating:

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 13Jun96 SOUTH AFRICA: NEWSBITES - NESSIE'S RIVAL.By Celia Locks and Kevin Rafferty.

South Africa has one more attraction for ever-eager tourists: its very own monster. Zulu legend has it lurking at the bottom of the 300-foot Howick Falls, exerting a magical force as it sucks victims into its underwater lair. The beast, said to look just like the one in Loch Ness, is drawing sightseers to the town of Howick in KwaZulu-Natal. They can see fuzzy photographs of a skinny long neck rising out of a swollen body, with three smaller `monsters' (looking suspiciously like ducks) swimming beside it. CL.

The waterfall called Howick Falls is approximately 95 meters in height (311 feet) and lies on the Umgeni River. The Zulu people called the falls KwaNogqaza, which means "Place of the Tall One". Sacred to the natives, only sangomas or traditional witch doctors can approach the lake to offer prayers to the creature .Corpses found floating in the water display body parts that have been partially consumed attributed by local superstition to Inkanyamba, the creature that lives in the falls. (Apparently it is a place often used by people to commit suicide) . In recent times sightings have been reported of a dinosaur like creature.

In 1962 at the nearby Umgeni River, a KZN Conservation Services game ranger, named Buthelezi, saw a creature with a horse-like head on the shore. When he got closer it vanished back into the river.

Johannes Hlongwane claims saw the Inkanyamba twice, once in 1971 and again in 1981. (He was the caretaker of a caravan park near Howick Falls between 1969 and 1985.). In 1981, Johannes Hlongwane was looking into the misty falls when he saw the form of a giant monster, with is neck raised about . thirty-two feet( 10 metres) into the air. He said it had a crest running along its back.

Bob Teeney claimed that in 1995 he saw a 25 feet (8 metres) giant serpent-like creature rise of the depths. He could see it’s head and neck. Bob Teeney has a fast-food shop at the falls claims to have the photographs to prove it. Fuzzy pictures of what he says is the creature rearing its head from the pool line the walls of his shop. One of the pictures, taken by a tourist, shows a pipe-like neck rising from a half-submerged swollen "body." Three smaller "monsters," which look like ducks, are swimming next to it. Teeney says the duck-like objects are baby monsters. Teeny says the monsters belong to an aquatic, snake-like dinosaur family known as the Plesiosaur.

The Inkanyamba are said by sceptics to be not a dinosaur like creature but to be a population of giant migratory, carnivorous eels, which are allegedly indigenious to southern Africa. Anthropologist Sian Hall, who lives in Howick, says "sensation seekers" have embroidered the myth passed on by generations of Zulus in the area that a giant water snake water snake "There are no physical monsters in the Howick Falls," she wrote in a newspaper article. "Giant eels, perhaps, and even huge otters, if that is your idea of a monster. We do not need to misinform the public, nor to use their gullibility to attract tourists to Howick," she said.

Article here on monster:

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/SOUTH+AFRICA+HAS+ITS+OWN+LOCH+NESS+MONSTER.%28NEWS%29-a065028463

Richard Freeman claims it is a hoax:

http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/2009/04/richard-freeman-howick-falls-monster.html

Have a look at the articles and the photo…..what do you think? AS anyone who reads this blog knows I don't believe a dinosaur could have survived all these years in it's original form and would have to have evolved. Therefore it appearing excatly as it does in the text books is very unlikely.

New big cat sighting UK

THE HUNT for a large wild cat thought to be prowling the Yorkshire Dales has been bolstered following a discovery by an East Lancashire walker.

Ongoing speculation that a fearsome feline, possibly a cougar or puma, is stalking the picturesque landscape has been strengthened after pictures of a creature’s tracks were taken by keen rambler Julie Penrose, 60.

full story here:

http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/5066477.Colne_walker_finds____puma____paw_print_in_snow/

Life discovered under ice.

New discoveries always bode well for cryptozoology as it shows there is much out there yet to be found.

NASA finds shrimp dinner on ice beneath Antarctica AP

WASHINGTON – In a surprising discovery about where higher life can thrive, scientists for the first time found a shrimp-like creature and a jellyfish frolicking beneath a massive Antarctic ice sheet. Six hundred feet below the ice where no light shines, scientists had figured nothing much more than a few microbes could exist.That's why a NASA team was surprised when they lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of an ice sheet in Antarctica. A curious shrimp-like creature came swimming by and then parked itself on the camera's cable. Scientists also pulled up a tentacle they believe came from a foot-long jellyfish. "We were operating on the presumption that nothing's there," said NASA ice scientist Robert Bindschadler, who will be presenting the initial findings and a video at an American Geophysical Union meeting Wednesday. "It was a shrimp you'd enjoy having on your plate." "We were just gaga over it," he said of the 3-inch-long, orange critter starring in their two-minute video. Technically, it's not a shrimp. It's a Lyssianasid amphipod, which is distantly related to shrimp. The video is likely to inspire experts to rethink what they know about life in harsh environments. And it has scientists musing that if shrimp-like creatures can frolic below 600 feet of Antarctic ice in subfreezing dark water, what about other hostile places? What about Europa, a frozen moon of Jupiter? "They are looking at the equivalent of a drop of water in a swimming pool that you would expect nothing to be living in and they found not one animal but two," said biologist Stacy Kim of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California, who joined the NASA team later. "We have no idea what's going on down there." Microbiologist Cynan Ellis-Evans of the British Antarctic Survey called the finding intriguing. "This is a first for the sub-glacial environment with that level of sophistication," Ellis-Evans said. He said there have been findings somewhat similar, showing complex life in retreating ice shelves, but nothing quite directly under the ice like this. Ellis-Evans said it's possible the creatures swam in from far away and don't live there permanently. But Kim, who is a co-author of the study, doubts it. The site in West Antarctica is at least 12 miles from open seas. Bindschadler drilled an 8-inch-wide hole and was looking at a tiny amount of water. That means it's unlikely that that two critters swam from great distances and were captured randomly in that small of an area, she said. Yet scientists were puzzled at what the food source would be for these critters. While some microbes can make their own food out of chemicals in the ocean, complex life like the amphipod can't, Kim said. So how do they survive? That's the key question, Kim said. "It's pretty amazing when you find a huge puzzle like that on a planet where we thought we know everything," Kim said. Source:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100315/ap_on_sc/us_sci_antarctica_sea_life

New discoveries on Hobbit island

News from Flores may shed more light on the Hobbit:

Hobbit' Island Shows Signs of Ancient Civilization

(March 17) -- In 2005, archaeologist Adam Brumm was in the midst of a dig on the sweltering Indonesian island of Flores when he decided to embark on a midday walk. While the rest of the crew was napping to stay out of the heat, Brumm, from Australia's University of Wollongong, came across a large, deep gully and ventured down. "I found some stone tools lying around on the surface," he recalled. But these weren't just any tools. Brumm suspected they were very, very old. "I quickly realized the significance and brought the rest of the team back." Now, after painstakingly excavating a section of the gully over several years, Brumm and his colleagues reveal in a new paper in the journal Nature that the site is indeed important. Their findings suggest that ancient humans occupied the island as long as 1 million years ago, or 120,000 years earlier than previously believed. The species that used these simple tools could be the ancestors of the famous so-called "hobbits of Flores," the tiny, small-brained species discovered there in 2003 and named after the little folk of the "Lord of the Rings" books.

Read full story here:

http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/hobbit-island-shows-evidence-of-million-year-old-civilization/19403582?icid=main|main|dl1|link6|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fscience%2Farticle%2Fhobbit-island-shows-evidence-of-million-year-old-civilization%2F19403582

Little people are in the news this week:

Cryptozoology: Leprechauns

By Doug Aamoth on March 17, 2010

Today is St. Patrick's Day. What better strange and mysterious creature to examine from a cryptozoological standpoint than the leprechaun? Modern-day depictions of the leprechaun—little bearded men with pots of gold filled by paychecks from television appearances hocking sugary children's cereal—can be seen as “little more than a series of offensive Irish stereotypes,” according to Wikipedia, so let's dig in to the actual mythology a bit.While traditionally human in appearance, the general belief is that leprechauns are either a type of fairy, or elves “said to serve as defenders of the faerie community.” The word “leprechaun” is thought to have grown from the Old Irish word “luchorpan”—“lu” meaning “small” and “corp” being the root of the Latin word “corpus,” meaning body.

Read more: http://techland.com/2010/03/17/cryptozoology-leprechauns/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fnerd_world+%28TIME%3A+Techland%29#ixzz0iWBxR0qp