Files in this item
Did Nineteenth Century marine vertebrate fossil discoveries influence sea serpent reports?
Item metadata
dc.contributor.author | Paxton, Charles George Mackay | |
dc.contributor.author | Naish, Darren | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2019-04-24T10:30:02Z | |
dc.date.available | 2019-04-24T10:30:02Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2019-04 | |
dc.identifier | 256232565 | |
dc.identifier | 0a01f8a1-04e3-46f8-8d19-1007059e5944 | |
dc.identifier | 85064533630 | |
dc.identifier | 000464613400003 | |
dc.identifier.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 | en |
dc.identifier.issn | 0736-623X | |
dc.identifier.other | ORCID: /0000-0002-9350-3197/work/56861233 | |
dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10023/17586 | |
dc.description.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. | |
dc.format.extent | 998280 | |
dc.language.iso | eng | |
dc.relation.ispartof | Earth Sciences History | en |
dc.subject | Sea monster | en |
dc.subject | Ichthyosaurs | en |
dc.subject | Ichthyopterygia | en |
dc.subject | Cryptozoology | en |
dc.subject | Saurian | en |
dc.subject | B Philosophy (General) | en |
dc.subject | D History General and Old World | en |
dc.subject | QL Zoology | en |
dc.subject | History and Philosophy of Science | en |
dc.subject | 3rd-NDAS | en |
dc.subject | SDG 14 - Life Below Water | en |
dc.subject.lcc | B1 | en |
dc.subject.lcc | D | en |
dc.subject.lcc | QL | en |
dc.title | Did Nineteenth Century marine vertebrate fossil discoveries influence sea serpent reports? | en |
dc.type | Journal article | en |
dc.contributor.institution | University of St Andrews. Statistics | en |
dc.contributor.institution | University of St Andrews. Scottish Oceans Institute | en |
dc.contributor.institution | University of St Andrews. St Andrews Sustainability Institute | en |
dc.contributor.institution | University of St Andrews. Centre for Research into Ecological & Environmental Modelling | en |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.17704/1944-6178-38.1.16 | |
dc.description.status | Peer reviewed | en |
dc.date.embargoedUntil | 2019-04-10 |
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.