Gambo

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Gambo, drawn from illustrations by Owen Burnham. Its stated dimensions, however, result in a much flatter head and a much wider body size

Gambo is the name of an unidentified carcass of a large marine animal that washed up on the beach of the Bungalow Beach Hotel in Kotu in the West African state of Gambia .

Origin of the Myth

15-year-old Owen Burnham and his family came to the site on the morning of June 12, 1983 while some villagers were beheading the animal. Owen, a nature lover, took the measurements of the body to make sketches later, but did not have a camera with him. According to later statements, he did not consider taking a sample until he realized that he could not identify it from books. The villagers eventually sold the animal's severed head to a tourist. They called him a " dolphin " after Owen , but he assumed it was only a superficial resemblance. The body was eventually buried and attempts to find it later were unsuccessful.

When the animal was mentioned in a newspaper article three years after Owen was found, it caught the attention of cryptozoologist Karl Shuker , who requested more information about the animal. According to Owen, the body showed little or no signs of putrefaction and measured approximately 4.6 meters in length. The color was brown on the back and white on the belly, the skin itself was smooth. Most of the measurements were taken from the head, which was 1.40 m in length. It had a 0.8 m long beak , 14 cm high and 13 cm wide, which was equipped with 80 uniform and conical teeth. There was a small pair of nostrils at the tip of the beak. The slightly arched head was 25 cm high and 30 cm wide and had small eyes. The front pair of fins measured 46 cm in length and 20 cm in width. One of the rear fins was badly injured and almost torn off, the intestines were visible. The body, inflated by water, was 1.8 m long and 1.5 m in circumference. There was no dorsal fin on the top of the animal . The tail was 1.5 m long and pointed.

There was much speculation as to which animal was found here. The paleontologist Darren Naish doubted that the reports were genuine at all - that no sample was taken, he found suspicious. The cryptozoologist Chris Orrick suspected that it was a severely mutilated Shepherd whale . Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe speculated that it could be an unknown form of the Shepherd whale. Another common suggestion is that the body is some sort of surviving prehistoric reptile . Shuker first suggested that it was either a plesiosaur or a Thalattosuchia crocodile, but later referred to it as "the last of the mosasaurs ". Other suggested contenders are Askeptosaurus or a primeval ichthyosaur such as Cymbospondylus or the ancient whale Basilosaurus .

See also

literature

  • Michael Bright: There Are Giants in Sea . Robson Books, London 1989, ISBN 0-86051-481-1 .
  • Karl PN Shuker: In Search of Prehistoric Survivors. Do Giant "Extinct" Creatures Still Exist? Blandford, London 1995, ISBN 0-7137-2469-2 , ( A Blandford book ).
  • Loren Coleman, Patrick Huyghe: The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep . Figure Illustrations by Harry Trumbore; Maps by Mark Lee Rollins. Jeremy P. Tarcher et al., New York NY 2003, ISBN 1-58542-252-5 .

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