Message #237038

[In the Mouth of Madness]

Monsters Don't Die Easily

Overall 1978 reports provided strong evidence favoring the shark identification, and no substantial objections to it. Even workers authors such as Obata and Tomoda, who initially supported the plesiosaur idea and emphasized potential problems for the shark interpretation, acknowledged that most evidence pointed to a shark and ruled out a plesiosaur. They stated, stating, "There are no known fossil reptilian species which agree with the animal in question" (Obata and Tomoda 1978). Most of the other 1978 report authors more plainly stated that the evidence strongly indicated a basking shark or closely related species (Abe, 1978; Hasegawa and Uyeno 1978; Omura, Mochizuki, and Kamiya 1978; Kimura et al 1978).

Unfortunately, the 1978 reports received less public attention than the original "sea-monster" stories. Most popular media seemed content to simply let the matter drop rather than helping to set the matter straight with follow-up articles. Likewise, several monster/mystery writers continued to depict the case as largely unresolved, including Welfare and Fairley (1980), Soule (1981), and Bord & Bord (1989). However, some good summaries of the 1978 research were provided by Cohen (1982), Bright (1989), LeBlond (1992), and Ellis (1994) who put aside any hopes that the beast was a plesiosaur, and properly explained that the specimen evidently represented one of several basking shark carcasses mistaken as a sea-monster.