kendal said: >Do you think plesiosaurs are millions of years old or thousands of years old? I think they are only thousands of years old. They are part of Creation. Scientists do not know how old the bones are, they are just guessing.

Guessing? GUESSING!?! We used the same type of "guessing" that made the medicine and vaccines that keep you alive, that invented and designed the computer you're using, and that quite possibly provides the electricity you use to power the computer that you use to write your uneducated statement. If you think science is just guesswork, then kindly stop using our stuff.

"I also believe there is no such thing as 'evolution'. Plesiosaurs could not possibly change into another species. When you look at fossils, you don't see any changes. It's 100% plesiosaur."

Fortunately, your disbelief in evolution is not as directly harmful as a comparable disbelief in gravity would be, although if it were Nature would suffer fewer fools. Much like gravity, evolution does not require your belief; it will chug along regardless. Do you mean fossils are not like transformers, in that I can't take a pleisiosaur bone and change it to a saurupod bone, complete with a neat sound effect? This is true, and silly. If you mean that the fossil record is the same, no matter what geological period you look at, this is patently and obviously false, and I am surprised that Phillip hasn't corrected your misconception. We definitely DO see a change in species over time. We HAVE seen one species evolve into another, both in the wild and in the lab. The fossil record has several very detailed time-dependent transitions from one gross form to another (e.g. whales). Sorry this doesn't fit into your preconceived world-view, but you have to learn to cope.

Tom, Australia was never covered by waters, frigid or otherwise, during the age of the plesiosaurs. It was part of the East Gondwana supercontinent. Loch Ness was never a bay; it was gouged by a glacier about 100K years ago. Same with Lake Champlain. Birds use echolocation, not just mammals (although it is more refined in mammals). You're wrong about a snake being unable to push a hump out of the water, as anyone who has seen a water snake swim can tell you. Pleisiosaurs predate mammals, so the DNA particular to mammals could not be present in plesiosaurs. These facts are all easily accessible via the internet; avail yourself of them.

It is possible that plesiosaurs could have evolved a heat-management system given the millions of years involved that was distinct from mammal system, but you still have a question of how they got into lakes that were dug by glaciers a mere 100K years ago.

Before you go off into flights of fanciful speculation about HOW plesiosaurs managed to survive this long in frigid waters, you must first show that they have. After you have bagged a plesiosaur, or found a carcass washed on the shore, or clear video of one, then you can start to figure out how they got there and just how related they are to prehistoric plesiosaurs. First comes the horse, then comes the cart.

Shygetz, you sound like a skeptic. I will never believe in evolution again. Animals don't evolve. They just can't. There are many animals that were thought extinct until they were found alive. Take the coelocanth for example. It was thought to have been extinct for millions of years until one was caught in 1938. Same goes for dinosaurs and marine reptiles. There are likely small populations of dinos and marine reptiles in REMOTE areas away from people.

How you found this site: cryptozoology.com

"Tom, Australia was never covered by waters, frigid or otherwise, during the age of the plesiosaurs."
Well that's what I heard on the show on the history channel. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5220784.stm) last 2 paragraphs. I was close enough.

"Loch Ness was never a bay; it was gouged by a glacier about 100K years ago."
Explain the fossilized marine seashells scientists dredged up during the investigation on the documentary. Even if a glacier was the cause, it doesnt mean a small group couldnt find their way in there via inlets after the lake formed.

"Same with Lake Champlain."
Nope. Although it might not have been a bay, it had access to the ocean since prehistoric times. Bay, inlet: all the same to a plesiosaur trying to evade predators. There was an excavation site there of a fossilized beluga whale and theres several fossilized coral reefs in the area of Lake Champlain (http://www.lakechamplaincommittee.org/lake/natural.html). Yes, I'm aware that there was a glacier that further carved out the lake. Doesnt mean the animals couldnt have relocated and over time they eventually found their way back in there.

"Birds use echolocation, not just mammals (although it is more refined in mammals)."
Yeah, the swiftlets and oilbirds. Two species of cavebirds, compared to several different species of mammals. Also, I'd think if a plesiosaur were to have inhereted the ability of echolocation, it would most likely have inhereted it from mammalian traits than avian traits. Now if it was related to, say, a velociraptor, it would be a different story.

"You're wrong about a snake being unable to push a hump out of the water, as anyone who has seen a water snake swim can tell you."
Really now? I had 8 water snakes as pets (Ive bred snakes), which all had a swimming pool sized (to them)container of water, and I've never seen any perform such behavior. In addition, most of them I caught while they were swimming, and the most I've seen them do is stick their heads about an inch or two out of the water. So please, send me a picture of one doing this acrobatic stunt and then I'll be convinced. Oh, and snakes, water or not, do not go into 42 degree water or they'll either die of shock or become severely ill.

"Pleisiosaurs predate mammals, so the DNA particular to mammals could not be present in plesiosaurs. These facts are all easily accessible via the internet; avail yourself of them."
I somewhat lean toward the belief of creationism. However, in your evolution point of view, maybe this animal was the first of what would later become aquatic mammals, and had the trait they would later possess.

"Before you go off into flights of fanciful speculation..."
Speculation.... isn't that how a hypothesis is formed? Hunches, speculations, guesses, etc? If you're a scientist, then why are you against it?

"...you must first show that they have. After you have bagged a plesiosaur, or found a carcass washed on the shore, or clear video of one, then you can start to figure out how they got there and just how related they are to prehistoric plesiosaurs."
I wish it were that easy, but unfortunately these are elusive animals. But now that you mention "carcass", on that documentary, they did find something on the bottom of Loch Ness that kind of resembles a plesiosaur carcass (long neck, limbs, etc.). I myself am skeptical about this, but I'll keep my fingers crossed.
There have been so many sightings of Nessie, Champ, and Ogopogo being "four flippered, long necked monsters", even since early times. The sightings of early settlers in the area should be the most convincing, since they would have no idea as to what a plesiosaur even was, let alone looked like. And yet there they are, describing reptilian aquatic beasts with long necks. Oh and lets not nitpick about certain minor descriptions of the "monsters" that somehow disproves them of being plesiosaurs, like humps or it's ability to raise it's neck up that for some reason, seems impossible to scientists that a plesiosaur can do such a thing. For example, look at a typical marine dolphin and then look at any freshwater dolphin (http://www.baiji.org/in-depth/freshwater-dolphins/species-guide.html). There are some differences in appearance, but theyre still dolphins. Maybe if this is a plesiosaur, it too changed slightly due to it's new environment. And if the coelacanth is too small of an example to show how prehistoric animals or mythological animals can come about to be proven to exist, then I'll use a bigger one: the giant squid. This animal was thought to be nothing but myth. We just started capturing this animal on film a few years ago.
"First comes the horse, then comes the cart."
Not a very scientific way of looking at it. We made an observation: there is something unknown living in these lakes. We've made our educated guesses: plesiosaur, basilosaurus, whale, some giant eel or snake, etc. now it's time to experiment: fully investigate and see

Tom,
Just a little bit about your water snake observations;
“the most I've seen them do is stick their heads about an inch or two out of the water. So please, send me a picture of one doing this acrobatic stunt and then I'll be convinced.”

No picture yet, but how is this for a source; North Carolina A&T – “They use the water's surface tension to glide and can lift 1/4 to 1/3 of their body length off of the water surface.”

“Oh, and snakes, water or not, do not go into 42 degree water or they'll either die of shock or become severely ill.”

Ok, but one could still fall in the water, and perhaps try to keep as much of its body out of the cold water as possible, see above.

"No picture yet, but how is this for a source; North Carolina A&T – “They use the water's surface tension to glide and can lift 1/4 to 1/3 of their body length off of the water surface.”"
Yeah, when theyre trying to get out of the water and onto a drooping branch near the water. Not when theyre in the middle of a lake. There would be no stimulus to cause such behavior. This still doesnt explain the humps. And can I get a link for that North Carolina A&T statement? All I can find is online general information about the university.

"Ok, but one could still fall in the water, and perhaps try to keep as much of its body out of the cold water as possible, see above."
Yes, well it would be getting out of the water as fast as possible, would not be in the middle of the body of water, and in the extremely rare instance that it might survive the exposure to frigid temperatures, would not be swimming routinely in the water.

Looks like this post is stale, but have you seen this 2009 video at this website--

http://champmonster.com/

I'm no expert-- not even a scientist-- so I may not know anything, but a few thoughts and observations I'd like to share if anyone's interested 2 years later--

Most all the lakes these creatures are reported to have been seen in are very deep freshwater lakes in temperate climates with definite winter freezes.

So-- first-- do they have to get through the ice to get air? I'd really like to know. Is this an issue? If they can't get through the ice, is it possible that each of these lakes have an underground / underwater cave that these creatures get into, where there is fresh air available? At Loch Ness I would particularly find this to be possible. (And for that matter, having never been to Scotland, I'm not positive that Loch Ness does freeze over each year, but I'm guessing it does, or at least used to before they started using it for regular barge traffic last century).

Secondly, can anyone answer this-- how do fish survive the frigid arctic waters, and the waters of frozen over lakes in the far north? Fish are cold-blooded animals. Frogs and other amphibians hibernate and actually freeze and thaw out in the spring in some cases. So-- could plesiosaurs not have some way of dealing with cold water without being warm blooded?

Another question-- since these lakes are extremely deep-- just how cold is the water in the bottom of the lake? I don't know just how this works-- I do know that if you dig down into the earth, the inside of the earth is a constant temperature under the crust all year round-- generally about 50 degrees Fehrenheit or so. When water freezes, it freezes from the top down. Is all the water in a deep lake the same temperature in wintertime? If the lake is 800 feet deep, and the weather outside is 0 degrees Fehrenheit for six weeks straight (with the normal variation above and below that; I grew up in New England, so I know the climate), what is the temperature at the bottom of the lake, and at the top of the lake right under the ice? Any ideas about this?

And furthermore, from looking at Plesiosaur fossils, do we have any proof that they are not mammals? They are not in the same taxonic family as any known living creature-- and the order of Mamalia has many varied creatures in it, including whales, seals, manatees, platypuses, elephants, sloths, marsupials, giraffes, hippos, and so on. From what we know of Plesiosaurs they may have had many of the same features as those creatures so named. Otherwise, Plesiosaurs and dinosaurs (and pterodactyls, and so on) may have also been in their own order-- a new and unknown "sixth" order in the phylum Chordata. These could very well be warm-blooded, they may or may not be monotremes, they may or may not nurse their young, they may or may not have hair or feathery coverings, they could have sonar or infrared abilities, they might have internal organ arrangements we've never observed or studied before, and so on.

I really do want to see one captured or cornered to be documented.

If it were up to me, I would be in favor of a tranquilizing and retrieval session, where the creature is tranquilized (hopefully while in shallower water), brought to the surface, taken to shore or onto a large boat, studied carefully, radio-tagged, well documented by as many witnesses as possible, and carefully released back into the lake (or loch, if you prefer! ) to help preserve the species. We would need to not do anything that might endanger its life or health (even the tranquilizer dart would be a risk-- how do we know it wouldn't be allergic to it?). Also, since, as Tom (I think) pointed out, they need to breed to maintain the species, so we would need to be sure to release it back into its environment before any harm befall it. We would not know how many of them there were in the lake, so every single one is necessary to maintain the gene pool.

If it was radio tagged, then it could be tracked from boats, etc. and studied more in the wild. Its habits could be learned, and it may just lead us to its mate (and entire clan, we might hope). If it was known that there was a sizeable population, then one might be able to be captured on a more permanent basis and studied in captivity.

I hope this dream comes true.

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I just took a look at the video, Jim. It's hard to say what it is. Obviously it's something living though, since it's creating a wake.

I've been hearing all of this about champ(s) being a plesiosaur(s), but i remember in Dinos : Dead or alive
as being a nothosaur, what do you think they are?

Personally, I think it's something we've never seen before. Both nothosaurs and plesiosaurs are supposedly reptiles, but scientists recorded sonar from an unidentified animal in Lake Champlain. No reptile is able to emit sonar, and nothing else living in that lake has the ability. I believe that it is what we call a "plesiosaur", but in the event that we do capture one (which I don't want to happen and would rather leave it untouched), I think our evolutionary branches of these creatures are going to have to be re-drawn.

I saw one last summer at night by the campfire, almost plucked my wife. It got spooked at last second . Got me thinking about migration, Saw one today just before sundown, it was thirty degrees or so today. Must be warm blooded and no migration necessary. Big Water, farms and lots of forest around here in northern Michigan.

I thought they were nocturnal,...... no just smart.

confuzio says ..... poopooers never look up

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