The Burrunjor,a Living Dinosaur?

There is a legend of a creature called the Burrunjor. The Burrunjor is said to be bipedal , about 20 -30 feet tall( 6-10 metres) and have 2 short, almost useless arms and live in Arnhem Land Australia. Some say it is a living dinosaur , a relative of T. Rex.

IN Rex and Heather Gilroy's Book “Out of the Dreamtime—The Search for Australasia's Unknown Animals” is the following story:

Campfire stories substantiating Aboriginal claims are commonplace across the far north. Back in 1978, a Northern Territory busman and explorer, Bryan Clark, related a story to me of his own that had taken place some years before. While mustering cattle in the Urapunji area, he became lost in the remote wilderness of that part of Arnhem Land. It took him three days to find his way out of the region and back to the homestead from where he originally set out.He had not known at the time, but his footprints had been picked up and followed by two Aboriginal trackers and a mounted policeman. On the first night of their search they camped on the outskirts of the Burrunjor scrub, even though the two trackers protested strongly against doing so. The policeman hobbled his horse, cooked their meal, then climbed into his swag and went to sleep.Later that night the two Aborigines shouting intelligibly and grasping for their packs and saddles suddenly woke him up. The policeman also realised at this moment that the ground appeared to be shaking. Hurriedly getting to his feet, he too gathered up his belongings, and shortly afterwards, the three galloped away. As he told Bryan Clark later at the Urapunji homestead, he had also heard a sound, somewhat like a loud puffing or grunting noise, certainly loud enough to be coming from some large animal. When asked if he intended to include this incident in his report, he replied he would not because he feared no one would believe him. The policeman warned Bryan never again to return to that area, because if he got lost there again he’d be “on his own”, as he would not come looking for him! The region’s cave art, thousands of years old, depicts these monstrous animals. Many Aborigines believe these monsters wander back and forth across the Gulf country and Cape York to this day. Back in 1950, cattlemen lost stock to some mysterious beast that left the mutilated, half-eaten remains of cows and bulls in its wake over a wide area, stretching between the border country and Burketown. Searchers on horseback found huge reptilian tracks of some bipedal-walking beast. They followed these three-toed tracks with their cattle dogs through some rough jungle terrain until they entered swampland beyond which was more dense scrub. However, it was at this point that the cattle dogs became uneasy and ran off. The horses were also uneasy and obviously did not want to cross the swamp. While most of the cattlemen decided their animals knew best, two men set off on foot with their carbines. The story goes that they soon came across further tracks in an open area beyond the swamp. While his mate searched about, the other man briefly spotted the dark form of an enormous creature, perhaps 30ft in height, further off in dense timber. The men left the scene in haste. Johnny Mathews, a part-Aboriginal tracker, claimed to have seen a 25ft tall bipedal reptilian monster, moving through scrub near lagoon Creek on the Gulf coast one day in 1961. “Hardly anyone outside my own people believes my story, but I known what I saw”, he said to me in 1970. In 1985 a 4-wheel drive vehicle and it s family of travellers, the Askeys, heading for Roper River Mission, happened to take a back road for some sightseeing. Just before they were to pull up and turn around to resume their journey to the mission, they all saw, moving together across an open plain some distance away, two bipedal-walking reptilian creatures a good 20ft tall respectively. “The monsters were a greyish-brown colour and dinosaur-like in appearance. We didn’t wait around”, said the father, Mr Greg Askey.

In 1984, huge three-toed footprints from a gigantic bipedal reptile was found near Narooma, New South Wales. Rex Gilroy confirmed the find and made a plaster cast of one of the tracks. The track was approximately 2 feet wide and 2 1/2 feet long.

So is this another story of a living dinosaur or something else? Recent research has suggested that T.Rex and it’s relatives did not have useless forearms. Although its clawed forearms were small, it has been postulated it was likely they were suited for grasping and manipulating captured prey once they were enmeshed in the powerful jaws. They were then muscular and not useless.

Rather than a living dinosaur it has been suggested that these creatures are giant monitor lizards, much more likely to have survived in Australia’s harsh terrain than dinosaurs. We have to remember the world the dinosaurs lived in was very different from our own. The oxygen content in the air was higher , the lack or pollution, the clear water in the seas, much warmer and different types of plants. Most of the prey for a large dinosaur would have disappeared and it would have not only have to adapt to breathing differently, but eating differently and living differently. I am not saying it is impossible for something to adapt and change but that it is highly unlikely it would appear the same as it did 65 million years ago. In order to live in our climate and conditions it would have to have changed considerably and would therefore not appear as the T. Rex we know from fossil records but an adapted or even hybrid version. So what would it look like? I will leave that for you to think about

(re-post from 2009)

Warning

To those who keep copying my posts without permission and claim it as their own work....I lick every single one before I post them !
#coronavirusjoke

Liberia's Cryptid Crocodile

The Gbahali

Liberia is a country on the West African coast.It  has a population of around 4,900,000. English is the official language, but over 20 indigenous languages are spoken, representing the numerous ethnic groups in the population. Tropical rainforests cover the hills, elephant grass and semi-deciduous forests make up the dominant vegetation .It  is a hot climate with heavy rainfall from May to October. The civil war has been over in Liberia since 2003. The country is in the process of rebuilding and is fairly stable now.

The Gbahali is a Cryptid said to live there .Described as 20 or 30 feet long, reptile like that kills people who stray into the river.

It first came to western notice when John-Mark Shephard wrote to Loren Coleman in 2007 and it was published on Cryptomundo . He was working in North Western Liberia.

The following quotes are from the letter:

“It is described as being like a crocodile or monitor lizard, but much larger (up to 25 or 30 ft long). It has an armored back with three rows of serrations running down it, a powerful tail, and a short snout with many large teeth. It is known to be an ambush predator, carrying its prey underwater to drown before coming on shore to eat it.”

“When I showed the villagers a picture of a Postosuchus taken off the internet, they all agreed that that is how the head and body of the gbahali looks, although the legs are semi-erect like a crocodile. As recently as this November 2007, someone was attacked and killed by a large unknown animal near a village called Gelema, on that river. The United Nations police went to investigate, and found out that only the man’s head and a few body parts were left on the river bank. In this same village, the town meeting house was built according to the length of a gbahali that was killed there in years gone by”

Postosuchus died out over 200 million years ago and is unlikely to have survived until modern day.However there are several types of crocodile in Liberia : slender-snouted crocodiles which live in rivers running  through rain forest and dwarf crocodiles that live in small streams in the  rain forest some entering the adjacent river and Nile Crocodiles.

 The largest is the Nile crocodile which can grow to 20 feet long and  which is known to swim up rivers during the rainy season, much like the gbahali is said to do.

 Rare pygmy hippos are surviving hidden in Liberia’s forests . According to British scientists, the creatures, which are almost never seen in the wild, were spotted in Liberia’ Sapo National Park using special camera traps. So it is possible a type of unknown crocodile could also be surviving there. So far no outsiders have seen the Gbahali but it could just be a matter of time before somewhere captures it on camera.

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New Species Discovered

Two New Sharks discovered

Two new species of shark have been discovered.They are very unusual with long snouts.
Read and see photos here :
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/18/world/sharks-new-species-scn/index.html

Every time a new species is discovered it bodes well for cryptozoology as an unknown species could be responsible for some reported sightings.

Quebec and its Lake Creatures

A re-posting from 2014 due to ill health

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 90 kilometers (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.

Mboya Jagwa, Water Serpent of Paraguay

Paraguay has its myths and legends but one of the  strangest ones is the story  of a creature called Mboya Jagwa, dog snake, a water serpent 60 or 70 feet long with a head like a dog and a hooked tail. The local people  all agree  the description of it, and one village was said to have moved to another part of the country because one of these creatures had settled nearby.

So a huge water serpent which is said to attain a length  from 60 to 100 feet. It is unknown to modern science, although one white man now living in Paraguay is said to have discovered a huge skeleton on the banks of a Riacho in the Choco. He did not realise the value of his find, and took no steps to preserve it. The Indians describe the creature as having a head like a dog, and as carrying that similarity still further by yelping like a puppy.

     “I have heard the story of an Indian who was attacked by one in crossing a little river in the central (arid quite populated) part of Paraguay. The serpeant swam swiftly towards the frightened man, and swirling in the water attempted to envelop his victim in the coils of his tail. The old man escaped this fate only by diving and escaping to the shore.

     All the Indians, the Paraguayans, and the Correntinos of the North of Argentina vouch for the existence of this horrible animal, and agree down to the smallest details in their descriptions of the creature and its habits. I have known an Indian village to be moved to another part of the country on account of the terror inspired by an "Mboya Jagwa" which had taken up its abode at the river crossing in front of their "toldos."

     In the Cordilleras, stretching from Villa Rica to the Rio Parand, people describe a probably extinct monster called the Tiger Jaguar (Iguana-Dog)—a creature with the head and tail of an alligator and the body of a dog. Now, these people have never had access to words of geology, so cannot know that they are giving a fairly accurate description of the "Dinosaurus," which existed in Colorado and Nebraska in immense numbers during other geological periods”

Source: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/79744755

Could there  be an ancient type of large snake living in Paraguay? It is always possible with new creatures being discovered all the time and some that were thought to be extinct re-appearing. Boa Constrictors are common there so another type of snake could also survive there. I wonder if any modern day sightings will turn up or will it remain just a story.

The Altamaha River Creature

Re-posted by request from

Thursday, 19 January 2012

Does a large snake like creature live in the Altamaha River?

The Altamaha river Creature ....The Altamaha-ha

There is said to be a creature living in the Altamaha river . The South Georgia coast is characterised by tiny islands, canals, waterways, deep rivers, and lots of inter-crossing creeks and streams. The Tama , indigenous natives to the area, told stories about the animal. According to Jim Miles in Weird Georgia, "Centuries ago, the Tama Indians first told tales of a huge water serpent that hissed and bellowed." The creature is called Altamaha ha, also known as Altie.”

The Altamaha-ha inhabits the Altamaha River and the surrounding waterways and marshes. This creature has been claimed to  be seen stranded on the banks of the river, trying to free itself frantically, and has also been observed cavorting on the surface. Some have said it approached them in a menacing way and even attacked a boat. It has been described as having a horizontal tail, like that of a porpoise, which moves up-and-down. It’s size is estimated  to be around 20 feet (6/7 metres) long. There have been some smaller creatures seen which are presumed to be youngsters and about 6 feet (2 metres )long. In appearance the creature is said to look somewhere between an alligator, an eel, and a dolphin, with large, protruding eyes and a pronounced alligator-like snout armed with large conical teeth. It has a serrated ridge across the back, like a series of small dorsal fins next to each other, and a true dorsal fin which is rather low. It is very elongated, grey on top and a white underbelly. There are said to be 350 sightings recorded.

In the 1920s, timbermen who rode the river reported sighting a creature , they described as a snake monster.

In 1935, a group of hunters spotted what they called a "giant snake" swim through the river.

A Boy Scout troop from the 1940s reported sighting a creature

In the 1950’s two officials from the Reidsville State Prison reported seeing a strange creature.

Then there is this from 1969:

On a night in July 1969 , Donny Manning and his brother embarked on his boat on the Altamaha River at Clark’s Bluff. The lights on the house boat allowed them to see for some distance. Fishing for catfish, Donny decided to use an old trick he had learned as a kid which was oatmeal and soda mixed on a three pronged hook. They were fishing in a little depression outside the rough water when something took the hook. It did not act like a regular catfish after a catch. Most catfish would take the hook, run and stop, and turn; instead it ran with the hook. Every once in a while it would come out of the water where they could see it. They say it measured about ten to twelve feet long and at first they thought it resembled a sturgeon, but after a few more jumps, they could tell it wasn’t. Donny claims it had a snout almost like an alligator, or, he thought, of a duck-billed platypus. He says it had a horizontal tail, instead of a fish like vertical one, and it also had a spiny kind of bony triangular ridge along the top of its body. The dorsal fin that was down, but he could see it on the back. The teeth were shining in the light were sharp pointed. The Creature was gun-metal gray on the top and oyster white-yellow on the bottom. It didn’t move along side to side like a snake either, but it moved up and down like a dolphin.” Mr. Manning says he has lived on the water all his life and has seen all kinds of creatures, but this was the most amazing thing he had ever seen. He also claims he was using a salt water rig with a 40 lb. test line and the creature snapped it like it was nothing. Mr. Manning estimates from the way it felt on the line and the way that it snapped it that it was at least 75 lbs.

During the summer of 1980 Andy Greene and Barry Prescott reportedly saw Altamaha-ha stranded on a mud bank near Cathead Creek. The creature lay halfway in the water, thrashing and trying to free itself from the bank. They described it as a dark coloured, with a rough skin and that it moved like nothing they had ever seen before. The creature was very large, three to four feet thick (1 metre) and twenty feet long( 6/7 metres). They observed the creature for ten minutes, before it freed itself, submerged, and disappeared.

In December of 1980 Larry Gwin spotted what he thought was Altamaha-ha in Smith Lake, located up the Altamaha River, while eel fishing. He described the creature as  fifteen to twenty feet( 5-7 metres) long and snake-like, with two brown humps that protruded from the water. It disappeared and did not resurface. The creature was spotted several more times in the early 1980s, particularly near Two-Way Fish camp. One eyewitness, Ralph Dewitt, a crab fisherman of fourteen years, described Altamaha-ha as "the world's biggest eel".

One of the most recent reports was from 2002 when a man who was pulling a boat up the river near Brunswick reported seeing something over twenty feet(7 metres) in length and six feet wide( 2 metres) break the water. The man reported that the animal seemed to emerge from the water to get air and then submerge again beneath the depths.

The story is popular in the McIntosh and Glynn County areas, which both border the Altamaha River. The local newspaper , The Darien News has covered the story several times . 

I can’t help thinking the description sounds like an alligator Gar. I may be wrong of course and some snake /eel like creature of an unknown species is still waiting to be discovered.

A Canadian Blonde Bigfoot?

OLD YELLOW TOP

Old Yellow Top is bigfoot type creature reportedly seen in the area of Ontario, Canada.          Canadian locals gave the beast its name 'Old Yellow Top' after seeing the light-coloured mane and the blond patch of hair on its head. The sightings started in September 1906 when the town of Cobalt was founded.

A sighting  was reported in July 1923 when two experienced woodsmen named J. A. MacAuley and Lorne Wilson, were taking test samples for mining claims near Cobalt. They saw what appeared to be a bear eating  in a blueberry patch. Mr. Wilson threw a stone at the animal to scare it away. The creature stood up, growled, and ran into the night. They were shocked by what they saw. Wilson said that the head was kind of yellow and the rest of it was black like a bear, but he had never seen a bear like it before. One stated: “It kind of stood up and growled at us. Then it ran away. It sure was like no bear that I have ever seen. Its head was kind of yellow and the rest of it was black like a bear, all covered with hair” (Green 1978: 249).

In April 1947 a woman and her young son began to walk along the railway tracks into Cobalt. The woman was aware there may be bear cubs around with their mothers so she jumped when she saw a large dark shape moving toward the track. She saw shocked to see it wasn’t a bear. The creature stood upright and  walked on two legs “almost like a man,” but was entirely covered in brown hair. The creature ignored her and her son and wandered  across the tracks and disappeared into the woods.

It was reported again on August 4, 1970 by Amos Latrielle, Larry Cormack, and others. They said that their group of 27 miners from Cobalt Lode Mine were driving down a road when the bigfoot walked across the road in front of them, causing the driver (Latrielle) to lose control and nearly plunge down a rock cut. Latrielle stated that the creature, first thought to be a bear, had lighter  hair running  down to reach its shoulders, the rest being dark fur."I have heard of this thing before, but never believed it," Latrielle said. "Now I'm not so sure."

No recent reports have appeared. So was it a strange looking bear or a blonde bigfoot? There is no reason to think that if bigfoot exists it shouldn’t have different coloured hair just as some cats are black and some are ginger. Hopefully there will be more sightings or even a photo so we can see if it is really a blonde bigfoot.

Green, John. 1978. Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us. B.C.: Hancock House.