Cryptozoology

basking shark.seen those a millions times. nothing special really. it's just an odd coincidence that the way basking sharks decay causes them to look a little like pleisiosaurs. and i mean a little. the neck is far too short.also, pleisiosaurs were not dinosaurs. actually, i think they did. certain african tribes have beening telling stories of mkele-mbembe for several hundred years. it's largely regarded as mythology, but well, so was the mountain gorilla.

we have a few really nice fuzzy pictures of the loch ness monster et al... it's really funny. no one ever seems to be able to take a GOOD CLEAR picture of something like that. maybe it's partially because if it were in focus it might looks like something else...here's something maybe someone can help me with. i'm looking for even a fuzzy picture of mokele-mbembe. i can't find a single thing. there's one aerial shot that, well, could be a rock. but that's about it. apparently, almost no one is even CLAIMING they've got on film.

Funny same thing with Ogopogo here in BC. The pictures always turn out fuzzy and with no way of determining distance. Odd that, eh?I've actually seen the ogopogo though, several times in fact.Okanogan lake is somewhat like Loch Ness in configuration. Long and thin. This seems to allow the lake to have a silvery sheen at times. When it is moderatly smooth.Perhaps the parallel, not too far apart shores (a few kms compared to 10's of kms of length) allows for the formation of standing waves more easily. In addtion, the steepish sides allow for vantage points above and looking down on the lake. This gives the sky reflecting silver blue surface of the lake (like mercury). Then when a standing wave forms you get black 'humps'. Often 3 in a row and they will sit there for many minutes at a time. They are exactly what is frequently described in ogopogo sightings.

Just a quibble, but it has been pointed out to me that there are no air or sea dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are strictly land species. There were, however, sea and air reptiles contemporary to the dinosaurs. Right, because they're edited or hoaxes. You're left with nothing that can be described as photographic evidence of dinosaurs, so my original statement is true - with the vast availiability of cameras - they're on cell phones now, for god's sake - why are there no pictures of dinosaurs if they're still alive? There is absolutely no speculation that the carcass in that picture belongs to anything but a basking shark in advanced stages of decomposition. Irrelevant; the claim was that the extinction of dinosaurs was posited not because of evidence that they are extinct but because of evolutionary bias. I pointed out that since it was concluded that dinosaurs were extinct long before evolution was formulated, that simply can't be true.If dinosaurs are not extinct, but have been living this whole time, why don't we ever find dinosaur fossils higher than cretaceous sediments?

There seems to be the underlying idea that if dinosaurs were not extinct that would be some problem for evolutionary theory. Could you explain why that would be if you think it is?There would be a problem going the other way. If there were reptiles back before the Devonian, say.

The biggest question I have about the isue is whether or not we would be able to recognize them if we foound them. There is no real reason to think that over the last 65 Million years any remnants that might still be about would remain the same. IMHO, it's far more likely that even if they were out there by today they would have evolved to look like a mouse or a moose.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

yeah, and champ in lake champlain. (why i wrote nessie et al) these stories are rather common. i don't entirely disbelieve them, as there is a possibility of something being there. the hump stories, as you pointed out, could well be anything. it's the neck stories/pictures that i find interesting and worth actual inquiry. oh, do tell. what was it like?i've only seen something mysterious in the water once, and it was in our big canal. it was pretty large, a single hump with spines and a membrane between them. i can say it was an actual object because i was at most 20 feet away, and could see skin texture and barnacles on it. it made two passes and displaced water. if i had to guess at what it was, i'd have to say a really big example of a goliath grouper (jewfish) or something similar. they actually live in the area, but they don't look exactly like what i saw.

I told you what it was like. The monster has a protective disguise that makes him look just like a dark, standing wave on a flat silvery lake.

ah, ok, so nothing special. i wasn't sure one point followed from the next. my mistake.

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Perhaps the parallel, not too far apart shores (a few kms compared to 10's of kms of length) allows for the formation of standing waves more easily. In addtion, the steepish sides allow for vantage points above and looking down on the lake. This gives the sky reflecting silver blue surface of the lake (like mercury). Then when a standing wave forms you get black 'humps'. Often 3 in a row and they will sit there for many minutes at a time. They are exactly what is frequently described in ogopogo sightings.

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Just the other day I came across a prog on Nessie making the same point; they showed footage of the standing waves that can appear in the loch, and they do look exactly like a sequence of humps.