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Unfortunately the histories of these curious carcasses are plagued with non-existent or poorly executed scientific scrutiny. Such is the case with the potentially monumental find known as the Gambian Sea monster (affectionately referred to as "Gambo") which was discovered on June 12, 1983, by amateur naturalist, Owen Burnham.
Burnham, a British native who spent a large portion of his life in West Africa studying its fauna, stumbled across this incredible corpse while taking a walk with some members of his family. The carcass was half-buried in the sand on a resort peppered stretch of Gambia's famous Bungalow Beach, which faces the Indian Ocean. Unlike most cases involving beached carcasses, Gambo showed almost no sign of decomposition, with the exception of a rear flipper, which had been partially ripped from the side of the remains.
Instantly intrigued by his find - though distraught by his lack of a camera - Burnham began to take extensive notes regarding this carcass. The beast measured over 14-feet in length and was covered with black skin, with the exception of its underbelly, which bore a paler hue. The animal was also reported as having a short neck, four, paddle-like flippers and an extended pair of jaws, which contained a total of 80, extremely sharp teeth.
Burnham's first assumption was that the creature must be some form of cetacean, due to the nostrils he found at the end of it's snout, but this assumption posed it's own set of problems due to the fact that during the course of their evolution all know marine cetaceans (including dolphins, porpoises and whales) had lost their back pair of flippers and developed blow holes in place of nostrils.
These descriptions have encouraged some scholars to theorize that the carcass may be a heretofore unknown species of whale or possibly even a relic cetacean along the lines of the Zeuglodon. Tragically, not long after the discovery of this fascinating carcass, local Gambian tourist traders cut off the creature's head and sold it as a souvenir before burying the rest of the corpse beneath the sand on the upper beach.
Although there are many theories regarding the identity on this mystery monster - ranging from a short necked variety of plesiosaur known as the pliosaur to the long extinct sea crocodile named thallatosuchian - the most likely scenario remains that the animal is an ancestral whale like the Zeuglodon.
An interesting foot note comes in the report of an expedition which returned to Gambia sometime during the 1990's in order to exhume the corpse. Upon their arrival they were greeted with the unfortunate information that a police station had been erected directly above the animal's reported resting sight. This fact made their already illegal endeavor all the more dangerous and our intrepid explores unfortunately returned home empty handed.
Burnham, a British native who spent a large portion of his life in West Africa studying its fauna, stumbled across this incredible corpse while taking a walk with some members of his family. The carcass was half-buried in the sand on a resort peppered stretch of Gambia's famous Bungalow Beach, which faces the Indian Ocean. Unlike most cases involving beached carcasses, Gambo showed almost no sign of decomposition, with the exception of a rear flipper, which had been partially ripped from the side of the remains.
Instantly intrigued by his find - though distraught by his lack of a camera - Burnham began to take extensive notes regarding this carcass. The beast measured over 14-feet in length and was covered with black skin, with the exception of its underbelly, which bore a paler hue. The animal was also reported as having a short neck, four, paddle-like flippers and an extended pair of jaws, which contained a total of 80, extremely sharp teeth.
Burnham's first assumption was that the creature must be some form of cetacean, due to the nostrils he found at the end of it's snout, but this assumption posed it's own set of problems due to the fact that during the course of their evolution all know marine cetaceans (including dolphins, porpoises and whales) had lost their back pair of flippers and developed blow holes in place of nostrils.
These descriptions have encouraged some scholars to theorize that the carcass may be a heretofore unknown species of whale or possibly even a relic cetacean along the lines of the Zeuglodon. Tragically, not long after the discovery of this fascinating carcass, local Gambian tourist traders cut off the creature's head and sold it as a souvenir before burying the rest of the corpse beneath the sand on the upper beach.
Although there are many theories regarding the identity on this mystery monster - ranging from a short necked variety of plesiosaur known as the pliosaur to the long extinct sea crocodile named thallatosuchian - the most likely scenario remains that the animal is an ancestral whale like the Zeuglodon.
An interesting foot note comes in the report of an expedition which returned to Gambia sometime during the 1990's in order to exhume the corpse. Upon their arrival they were greeted with the unfortunate information that a police station had been erected directly above the animal's reported resting sight. This fact made their already illegal endeavor all the more dangerous and our intrepid explores unfortunately returned home empty handed.
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