As a mysterious skeleton is washed up on a British beach... Do sea monsters REALLY exist?
By Dr Darren Naish
Translation by Autumnson Blog
Last updated at 8:33 AM on 21st July 2011
For centuries they’ve been a part of maritime legend, inspiring curiosity and terror in equal measure. Lurking in the depths of the oceans, shocking in size and appearance, gigantic serpents and prehistoric monsters are as much a source of fascination as ever, especially in Hollywood.
數世紀以來，牠們一直是海上傳奇的部分，同等程度啟發好奇心和恐怖。潛伏在海洋的深處，令人震驚的體積和外觀，巨大的蛇和史前怪獸都是魅力的來源如昔，尤其是在好萊塢。
In the past two or three years alone, attacks by huge undersea beasts have provided the centrepiece battles at the ends of blockbusters such as Pirates Of The Caribbean, Clash Of The Titans and The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader.
獨在過去的兩三年，被巨大的海底野獸攻擊在大片尾段提供核心的戰鬥，例如海盜王、諸神之戰及黎明踏浪的航程。
But are such tales of strange sea beasts more than mythology? Is there any evidence to suggest that some of these monsters of the watery deep - from Jules Verne’s giant squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea to the legendary Kraken, a leviathan sending sailors to their doom - might actually exist?
但這些塵封的奇怪海獸會多於衹是神話嗎？有否任何證據提出這些水樣深的怪物中的一些 - 從儒勒凡爾納的巨型魷魚在海下兩萬聯盟至傳說的海妖，一個利維坦送水手往他們的滅亡 - 實際上可能存在嗎？
深的神秘：僅在本週，瑪格麗特 Flippence當沿著鴨巴甸附近的海灘漫步時偶遇這件骨架。專家們昨晚仍在試圖找出30呎冲上岸的神秘遺骸是什麼
Certainly, the study of the possible existence of sea monsters and other creatures of legend - known as cryptozoology - remains an area that captures the imagination of scientists and laymen alike.
Last week I took part in a major debate at the Zoological Society in London at which I and my colleagues wondered whether there might be more to these stories than mere myth.
Only this week, photographs emerged of the large carcass of an unidentified sea creature washed up on the beach near Aberdeen. It is the subject of fevered speculation, with some claiming it is a sea monster and others (more sensibly) saying it’s a plain old pilot whale.
Further fuelling the popular enthusiasm for sea monster lore, on Tuesday night the Discovery Channel screened footage, filmed by Alaskan fishermen, of what appeared to be an immense sea creature — at least 30ft long — with humps on its back, breaking the surface of the ocean.
What may simply be an example of a whale and its wake has been imaginatively recast by viewers as the Alaskan Nessie.
沖上來：55歲的瑪格麗特 Flippence與她的丈夫尼克行在蘇格蘭的海灘上時，她發現這件不明生物的骨骼
Given that previously unknown large marine animals continue to be discovered, the idea is far from outlandish. It’s perfectly plausible that species of shark, rays and whale still wait to be identified. Indeed, according to some estimates, there could be as many as 50 species of large sea‑going animals awaiting discovery.
Despite advances in sonar equipment, remotely operated cameras and deep-sea submersibles, only a fraction of the vast oceans that cover so much of the Earth have been examined.
It was only in 1976, for instance, that the incredible Megamouth shark was discovered. And it was found entirely by chance when one became entangled with the anchor of a U.S. navy ship off the coast of Hawaii.
An unusual-looking, deep-water creature with a large, rubbery head and enormous mouth that can open 4ft wide, the Megamouth is unlike any other shark previously seen. To this day, sightings remain extremely rare.
驚訝的發現：怪物被捕獲於2009年阿拉斯加視頻上的，似乎可達30呎及有鴕在它的背上
Equally rare is Omura’s whale, named after a biologist from Tokyo. This creature, around 33ft in length, was first caught by a Japanese research vessel in the Pacific in the late Seventies — yet hardly any specimens have been caught or filmed since.
So we can be extremely confident new species will keep on being found as we continue to explore our planet.
What we don’t know is whether any of these species might match those creatures mentioned in the fantastical tales passed down to us through history or in more recent eyewitness accounts of sea monsters.
The Roman writer Pliny gives an account of a giant octopus in his natural history books, while sea dragons began to feature on the edges of medieval maps in the 13th century to demarcate the edge of charted waters.
By the time of the Renaissance, tales of strange creatures sighted on the horizon or washed up on shore were increasingly common.
On his return journey from Newfoundland in 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, an adventurer and half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, claimed to have encountered a strange, lion-like sea monster with glaring eyes.
By the 18th century, the reports had become more elaborate.
神話的：尼斯湖水怪在蘇格蘭高地已有很多目擊事件，包括這張拍攝於 1934年的照片宣稱展示了該生物
Hans Egede, a missionary from Denmark, reported a sighting of ‘a most terrible creature’ off the coast of Greenland in 1734. He recorded that ‘the monster lifted its head so high that it seemed to be higher than the crow’s nest on the main mast. It was longer than the whole ship’.
Could at least some of these accounts refer to encounters with real animals?
Research on the reliability of eye-witnesses shows that there are many reasons to be cautious about claimed monster sightings. People’s memories are typically untrustworthy in recalling distances and sizes, especially in the huge, empty expanse of the ocean.
So what might appear to be a strange creature could just be a wave or a trick of the light, or perhaps just the fanciful vision of sailors stranded for too long in becalmed waters.
Over the years, many accounts of sea monsters have talked of large, slithering marine serpents, apparently utterly different to anything recognised by science.
Egede’s account of 1734 is one of the classics. But it is possible that what people actually saw were nothing more than the penises of courting male whales, for such organs can be more than 10ft long.
In the same vein, others have spoken of seeing bizarre, dinosaur-like creatures with long necks, deep, staring eyes and whiskers round their mouths. Perhaps these are descriptions of elephant seals, which can reach 16ft in length, have a distinctive proboscis overhanging their jaw (rather like an elephant’s trunk), can move rapidly through water and emit a loud roar which could strike fear into an onlooker.
One common notion about sea monsters is that, if they exist, then perhaps they could be modern-day descendents of plesiosaurs, the marine reptiles that ruled the seas during the age of the dinosaurs.
After all, the sightings often super-ficially seem to match some of the characteristics — such as a long neck or giant flippers — of these long extinct creatures of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
The belief that the oceans might contain descendants from the dinosaur age is known as the ‘prehistoric survivor paradigm’.
But there are two central problems with this idea. First of all, what we know of plesiosaur fossils shows that the living animals did not really match the modern sea monsters described by eyewitnesses.
While the modern-day sea monsters are described as raising their necks high out of the water and even waving them around, plesiosaur necks were far less flexible.
In fact, it seems plesiosaurs were simply unable to raise their massively long necks above the water’s surface. If you have ever tried to lift a heavy pole out of the water from one end, you will know how gravity makes such a task impossible.
The second main problem with the prehistoric survivor idea is that there are absolutely no fossilised plesiosaurs from rock younger than 65 million years old. If some plesiosaurs had survived into our present age, we would expect a continuous fossil record.
Ah, say those who want to believe these marine giants are still with us, what about the coelacanth — the 5ft fish that was thought to have become extinct at the same time as the plesiosaurs, but in the Thirties was discovered to be living in the seas off southern Africa?
There were, it is said, no coelacanth fossils younger than 65 million years old, yet it obviously survived down the millennia.
However, the bones of plesiosaurs are extremely large and tough, which means not only that they remain intact but they are also easy to recognise and classify.
It is a completely different story with the coelacanths, whose bones are much more fragile, small and vulnerable, so traces are far harder to find.
Whatever your view — and experts remain divided — it seems that the best biological evidence suggests we are unlikely to discover a terrifying new monster lurking in the depths. But that’s not to say it won’t happen.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2017101/As-mysterious-skeleton-washed-British-beach--Do-sea-monsters-REALLY-exist.html
英國夫婦海灘發現9米長"海怪"尸體
2011年07月22日08:00
來源：中國新聞網
據英國媒體20日報道，英國一對夫婦近日在海灘發現一具長30英尺(約合9.1米)的“海怪”尸體，大感震驚。
據報道，居住在英國蘇格蘭阿伯丁郡的一對老年夫婦在海灘遛狗時，突然發現一具正在腐爛的不明動物的尸體，讓他倆感到驚訝。這具看起來如同傳說中“海怪”的動物尸體長9.1米左右，頭部、牙齒和尾部都還可以辨認。
59歲的弗利彭斯先生說，“我們都驚呆了，我心想，天哪，這是什麼東西？”他表示，“它像是我從來沒見過的東西，看起來幾乎像是史前動物”。
自然歷史博物館一名發言人說，經哺乳動物專家鑒定，這頭“海怪”的尸體可能是一頭長鰭巨頭鯨，但這種動物通常不會在死后被沖上海灘，所以人們並不常見到。
倫敦動物園一名海洋生物專家說，這頭動物可能是一頭虎鯨或體型較小的巨頭鯨尸體。
http://scitech.people.com.cn/BIG5/15217977.html
科學家稱：“神秘海怪”真實存在於海底世界
2011年07月15日09:06
據英國每日郵報報道，從挪威海妖至巨大的海蛇，深海中可怕的海怪一直困擾著世代水手的想象力。目前，海洋生物專家聲稱，海怪可能真實存在，由於科學家仍致力於發現水下生命新物種，發現“海洋怪獸”並不是沒有可能性。
英國朴茨茅斯大學古生物學家達倫-奈什博士說：“大量的‘海怪’目擊事件並不能完全由視覺誤差來解釋，或者是已知海洋生物，抑或是惡作劇。至少其中有部分目擊事件是由一些具有豐富經驗的自然學家發現的，或者這些目擊事件的描述是真實的，是對一些未知生物的重大發現。”
1905年，動物學家艾德蒙-米德-沃爾多和邁克爾-尼科爾報道稱，在巴西海岸發現一條奇特的“海蛇”。1848年8月，英國皇家代達羅斯號船員在航行至南大西洋聖赫勒拿島的途中，發現一條近20米長的海怪。與此同時，倫敦的生物學家表示這很可能是一隻海象，或者是浮在水面的獨木舟。
奈什博士在7月11日召開的倫敦動物學會會議上說：“由於陸續不斷地發現體形較大的海洋生物——近年來發現各種新型鯨魚和鯊魚物種，未來像這樣的神秘海洋生物仍會有新的發現。”
一些人猜測近年來海怪目擊事件中很可能是蛇頸龍，這是一種與恐龍生活在同一時期的長頸爬行動物。但是聖安德魯斯大學的查爾斯-帕克斯頓博士認為這種觀點是不正確的，7月11日他主辦此次會議，該會議的主題是：“隱生動物學——科學還是偽科學？”他說，“如果有史前動物存活至今，那麼這僅是暗示著我們對化石記錄理解的某一環節出現了錯誤。”
帕克斯頓博士指出，目前我們錯誤地認為所有海洋大型生物都已發現，或許在某處海洋深處生存著鮮為人知的“海怪”。例如：1995年在海底發現一條巨型鰩魚，其體長可達到3.42米。在過去二十年裡，已發現8種大型海洋生物。
隱生動物學是研究隱藏生物的學科，或許搜尋那些未被証實的現存神秘生物。比如：尼斯湖水怪和喜馬拉雅山雪人。（卡麥拉）
來源：搜狐科學
http://scitech.people.com.cn/BIG5/15163045.html
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