![]() Recently, British researchers Charles Paxton and Darren Naish decided to rigorously scrutinise the Sprague de Camp hypothesis in other words, to determine whether, in fact, the alleged sea monsters decided to change shape in order to adapt to the scientific canons of the time. As science fiction author Lyon Sprague de Camp wrote in 1968, “after Mesozoic reptiles became well-known, reports of sea serpents, which until then had tended towards the serpentine, began to describe the monster as more and more resembling a Mesozoic marine reptile like a plesiosaur or a mosasaur.” The writer suggested that it was the discovery of the fossils of these animals and their dissemination that were turning the snakes into beings with a fusiform body, fins and elongated neck, whose most famous representative is undoubtedly Nessie, the Loch Ness monster. ![]() However, in the 19th century a curious change in trend began to take place. The “Great Sea Serpent” according to Hans Egede. Many of the stories referred to by the navigators spoke of monsters in the form of serpents, and in fact their tales were not so far-fetched since there is no lack of sea creatures with this appearance: from actual sea snakes to the tentacled arms of the giant squid to other more aberrant organisms like the pyrosome, a species of very long luminous sock composed of thousands of individuals. ![]() ![]() It is not surprising that ancient voyages through unknown and hostile oceans gave rise to all sorts of myths about sea beasts. We review below some classic cases and the science surrounding them. Although many of those monsters were definitively discarded with the advance of zoology, legends about others have endured almost to this day.Īnd yet, many of the monsters were not one hundred percent fantasy, but rather these cryptids -supposed animals, clearly non-existent- were born when human reasoning combined a rudimentary knowledge of nature with a strong dose of imagination. Sharing the pages with real animals were fantastical creatures that have never existed, but were passed along from one volume to the next because someone once said they had seen them. Since antiquity and during the Middle Ages, anyone opening one of the then popular bestiaries (illustrated volumes that described various animals) could find within the covers a mixture of reality and fiction. ![]()
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