Montauk Monster
41°02′21″N 71°55′07″W / 41.039132°N 71.918714°W
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8f/RhodeislandMonster.jpg/220px-RhodeislandMonster.jpg)
The "Montauk Monster" was an animal carcass that washed ashore on a beach near the business district of Montauk, New York, in July 2008.[1][2] The identity of the creature and the veracity of stories surrounding it have been the subject of controversy and speculation. The corpse was eventually decided by experts to be that of a water-degraded raccoon.[3][4]
History
The story began on July 23, 2008, with an article in the newspaper
We were looking for a place to sit and play ball games. Like they did in the summer of 93 when we saw some people looking at something ... We didn't know what it was ... We joked that maybe it was something from Plum Island.[5]
Her color photograph of the creature ran in black and white under the headline "The Hound of Bonacville," a
Hewitt and her friends were interviewed on Plum-TV, a local
Photographs were widely circulated via email and weblogs, and the national media picked up on it raising speculation about the creature. The potential urban legend stature of the Montauk Monster was noted by Snopes.[10]
The monster has been discussed on Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura. On August 4, 2011, the Montauk Monster was featured on the second episode of the third season of Ancient Aliens, titled "Aliens and Monsters".
Identifications
Initial media reports included speculation that the Montauk Monster might have been a turtle without its shell—although turtles' shells are fused with the spine and cannot be removed in this way—[11][12] a dog, a large rodent, or a science experiment from the nearby government animal testing facility, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.[13]
William Wise, director of Stony Brook University's Living Marine Resources Institute, inspected the photo along with a colleague; they deemed the creature a fake, although Wise's "next-best guess" was that the creature could be a diseased dog or coyote which had "been in the sea for a while". Wise discounted the following general possibilities:[5]
- Raccoon – the legs appear to be too long in proportion to the body.
- teeth.
- Rodent – rodents have two large, distinctive incisor teeth in front of their mouths.
- Dog or other canine such as a coyote – the corpse is doglike, but the eye ridge and feet do not match.
- Sheep or other ovine – although the face looks "somewhat ovine", sheep do not have sharp teeth.
Palaeozoologist Darren Naish studied the photograph and concluded from the corpse's visible dentition, skull shape, and front paws that the creature was a raccoon, with its extremely odd appearance merely a byproduct of decomposition and water action removing most of the animal's hair and some of its flesh.[3] Naish disagreed with the idea that the legs were disproportionately long for a raccoon, providing an illustration of a raccoon's body superimposed over the corpse in the photograph.[3] Jeff Corwin also identified the carcass as that of a raccoon in a Fox News interview.[14]
See also
References
- ^ Lawson, Richard (2008-07-29). "Dead Monster Washes Ashore in Montauk". Gawker. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ "Video – Breaking News Videos from". CNN.com. 2006-11-16. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ a b c "What was the Montauk monster? : Tetrapod Zoology". Scienceblogs.com. 2008-08-04. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ Wagenseil, Paul (2008-08-01). "'Montauk Monster' mystery gets more mysterious". Fox News. Archived from the original on 2013-09-27. Retrieved 2015-02-17.
- ^ a b c Brown, Joye (2008-07-31). "The Montauk Monster: Legend or latex?". Newsday. Archived from the original on 2008-08-12. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ Merrill, Kitty (2008-07-23). "The Hound of Bonacville". The Independent. East Hampton. Archived from the original on July 22, 2012. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ a b Henderson, Nia (2008-08-03). "Montauk residents proud of their 'monster'". Newsday. Archived from the original on 2008-08-13. Retrieved 2008-08-03.
- ^ "Paging Darwin: Is Montauk Sea Monster Real or Photoshop Phantasy". Hamptons Plum. 2008-07-30. Archived from the original on 2008-10-14.
- ^ "Investigating the Montauk Monster: The Story Deepens". New York. 2008-07-30. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ "The Montauk Monster". Snopes. 2008-08-05. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ "Montauk 'Monster' Photograph". Hoax Slayer. Archived from the original on 2009-03-02. Retrieved 2008-08-13.
- ^ Boyd, Aaron (2008-07-31). "Naturalists Confirm Montauk Monster Is Relative Of Rocky Raccoon". Hamptons.com. Archived from the original on 2008-08-20. Retrieved 2008-08-13.
- ^ Wagenseil, Paul (2008-07-31). "'Montauk Monster' Has Hamptons in a Tizzy". Fox News. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ Wagenseil, Paul (2008-08-01). "'Montauk Monster' mystery gets more mysterious". Fox News. Archived from the original on 2013-09-27. Retrieved 2015-02-17.