PLESIOSAURUS SNAGGED IN JAPANESE FISHING NETS!

As expected, the New Zealand monster story has also drifted onto the Internet, often in mangled form. Creationists Kent Hovind (1996) , Walter Brown (1996), Bernard Northrup (1997) , Paul Smithson (1996), and Don Patton (1995) all encourage the plesiosaur interpretation. On his 1996 website, Brown matter-of-factly called the creature a plesiosaur, which he incorrectly called a sea-going "dinosaur." He also noted that the carcass had vertebrae, asserting these are "something not present in many fish, including sharks." (Of course fish, including sharks, do have vertebrae). To his credit, Walter Brown's 2006 website retracts his endorsement of the plesiosaur ID. See Brown, 2006 in the references. Another 1996 creatioist article in the British publication Origins reviewed the case and conclided "the weight of the evidence points to the New Zealand carcass being a decomposed basking shark..." and "strongly recommended" that creationist refrai from suggestions that the carcass is that of a recently living plesiosaur.

However, other creationists disregarded this advice and continued to encourage the plesiosaur ID, or suggested the matter was still "mysterious" as does the 2006 "Accuracy in Genesis" website. Perhaps the most curious example is that of John , who not only belives in living plesiosaurs, but also recent pterosaurs and dinosaurs. Goertzen wrote a paper published in the June 2001 Creation Research Society Quarterly arguing that there were extra fins on the Japanese carcass missed by other workers, but matching an eqyptian "seal." Never mind that no plesiosaurs are known to have the fin pattern he claims to see, and that the egyptian "seal" is interpretive at best. Even other strict creationists find no substance in Goertzen's arguments (Jerlstrom, 1998; Jerlström and Elliott, 1999).

Strange Magazine's "globsters" web site provides fairly accurate summaries of the Zuiyo-maru carcass and several other carcass strandings, as does Roesch (1997a).