St Andrews Research Repository

St Andrews University Home
View Item 
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  • Login
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Did Nineteenth Century marine vertebrate fossil discoveries influence sea serpent reports?

Thumbnail
View/Open
ESH_38_1_02_Paxton_Naish.pdf (974.8Kb)
Date
04/2019
Author
Paxton, Charles George Mackay
Naish, Darren
Keywords
Sea monster
Ichthyosaurs
Ichthyopterygia
Cryptozoology
Saurian
B Philosophy (General)
D History General and Old World
QL Zoology
History and Philosophy of Science
3rd-NDAS
Metadata
Show full item record
Altmetrics Handle Statistics
Altmetrics DOI Statistics
Abstract
Here we test the hypothesis, first suggested by L. Sprague De Camp in 1968, that “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.” This statement generates a number of testable specific hypotheses, namely: 1) there was a decline in reports where the body was described as serpent or eel-like; 2) there was an increase in reports with necks (a feature of plesiosaurs) or reports that mentioned plesiosaurs; and 3) there was an increase in mosasaur-like reports. Over the last 200 years, there is indeed evidence of a decline in serpentiform sea serpent reports and an increase in the proportion of reports with necks but there is no evidence for an increase in the proportion of mosasaur-like reports. However, witnesses only began to unequivocally compare sea serpents to prehistoric reptiles in the late nineteenth century, some fifty years after the suggestion was first made by naturalists.
Citation
Paxton , C G M & Naish , D 2019 , ' Did Nineteenth Century marine vertebrate fossil discoveries influence sea serpent reports? ' , Earth Sciences History , vol. 38 , no. 1 , pp. 16-27 . https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6178-38.1.16
Publication
Earth Sciences History
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6178-38.1.16
ISSN
0736-623X
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2019, History of Earth Sciences Society. This work has been made available online by kind permission of the publisher. This is the final published version of the work, which was originally published at https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6178-38.1.16
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/17586

Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Advanced Search

Browse

All of RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateNamesTitlesSubjectsClassificationTypeFunderThis CollectionBy Issue DateNamesTitlesSubjectsClassificationTypeFunder

My Account

Login

Open Access

To find out how you can benefit from open access to research, see our library web pages and Open Access blog. For open access help contact: openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Accessibility

Read our Accessibility statement.

How to submit research papers

The full text of research papers can be submitted to the repository via Pure, the University's research information system. For help see our guide: How to deposit in Pure.

Electronic thesis deposit

Help with deposit.

Repository help

For repository help contact: Digital-Repository@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Give Feedback

Cookie policy

This site may use cookies. Please see Terms and Conditions.

Usage statistics

COUNTER-compliant statistics on downloads from the repository are available from the IRUS-UK Service. Contact us for information.

© University of St Andrews Library

University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland, No SC013532.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter