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Imagine a monster living on the borders of the upper north shore. An aquatic beast which lurks in the depths of the Hawkesbury River. A creature related to the Loch Ness monster.

For cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy, the fledgling legend of the Hawkesbury River Monster is real and he’s determined to prove it.

Since 1965, he and his wife Heather have been gathering information on a creature he believed still lives in our major waterway, or once did.

After years of “patience, field trips and stake-outs’’ along the shores of the river, Mr Gilroy, who is also known for his research on the Blue Mountains Panther, hopes to finally obtain photographic evidence.

“Sooner or later, I’m hoping to get the shot of shots,’’ Mr Gilroy told the Advocate.

The Gilroys say they have compiled hundreds of sightings reports.

“They tend to be seen around (Mooney Mooney and Long Island),’’ Mr Gilroy said.

“There are stories of houseboats being lifted up at one end when something underneath tried to surface over at Jerusalem Bay.

“A lot of the inlets here have stories.’’

The most recent sighting was by fishermen near Wisemen’s Ferry, in March.

“(One of them) momentarily saw a serpentine head and about 2m of long neck rise above the water before submerging,’’ Mr Gilroy said.

He also referred to a sighting by Rosemary Turner in 1975, who reported a monster swimming upstream from a lookout at Muogamarra Nature Reserve.

Robert Jones, a palaeontologist from the Australian Museum, said that as far as science is concerned, the existence of the Hawkesbury River Monster has never been proven.

“It’s impossible for them to live in the Hawkesbury River; they just don’t exist,’’ he said.

But according to Mr Gilroy, the monster is part of Aboriginal folklore, with stories of women and children being attacked by the “moolyewonk’’ or “mirreeular’’ both indigenous names. They also feature in ancient rock art on the banks of the river.

“There’s got to be something to it,’’ Mr Gilroy said.

Descriptions of the Hawkesbury River Monster liken it to the prehistoric plesiosaur, an aquatic dinosaur 70 million years extinct.

The Loch Ness monster is also said to be related to the same extinct creature.

Mr Jones said plesiosaurs did exist in Australia, but ther was no evidence of them inhabiting the Hawkesbury River.

However both Mr Gilroy and Mr Jones describe the aquatic dinosaur as grey and mottled in colour, with a large bulky body, two sets of paddle-like flippers, a long neck and serpent-like head and thick, eel-like tail.

Sighting reports describe it as about 24m long. Mr Jones said the plesiosaur grew up to 10m long.

Mr Gilroy said he and his field assistant Greg Foster may have sighted the creature last August, from a high bank near Wiseman’s Ferry.

They described seeing a dark, bulky shape with a long neck about a metre from the surface.

Its movements caused surface disturbance which appeared to suggest a marine creature with two sets of flippers and a tail, Mr Gilroy said.

“It was encouraging,’’ he said.

“I’m hopeful that I’m going to get some sort of evidence that satisfies me … and when I’ve got that, I will be pleased to put it on the desk of some scientist and say `well there you are!’’’

Source: hornsby-advocate

Plesiosaur

Cryptozoology can be a lonely hobby. Cryptozoologists are often the butt of significant ridicule from both inside and outside the scientific community.

While not every cryptozoologist thinks critically or is scrupulous about methodology, most are quite serious about what they are doing. The periodic reappearance of species formerly thought to be extinct is the kind of event that keeps cryptozoologists going.

The truth is, whatever might be said about cryptozoologists and their quirks, ancient animals and plants really do vanish and the reappear with surprising frequency. Such animals and plants are discovered so often, in fact, that paleontologists have a term for them: They are called ‘Lazarus taxa’ (after the man raised from the dead in the Gospel of John), meaning they were thought to be extinct for some extended period, then suddenly reappeared, alive and well.

Many people believe that cryptids may actually be extinct species that have found a way to survive. Lake Monsters are especially likely to be attributed to an actual reappearing species, most often, specifically, the Plesiosaur, an aquatic dinosaur with a long neck and fins that lived during the Cretaceous period and disappeared from the fossil record about 65 million years ago.

Could a 65 million year old dinosaur have survived undetected in landlocked glacial lakes?

The Plesiosaur was a carnivore and a large one, so it does seem to be fairly unlikely. Such lakes usually do not have enough fish to support a huge predator. (Lake Okanagan, the home of the ‘Ogo Pogo’ lake monster is one notable exception).

Still, weirder things have happened.  Here are ten of them:

The Coleacanth. This large prehistoric fish was thought to have gone extinct 80 million years ago until a live specimen was found in 1938.

Monoplacophora Mollusks. These innocuous shellfish from the prehistoric Devonian period (circa 380 million years ago) were found happily alive (well, however happy a mollusk can get) in deep waters off Costa Rica in 1952.

The Pygmy Tarsier. This odd, gremlin-like animal was thought to have gone extinct 80 years ago until a Texas A & M researcher found three of them alive and well in Indonesia.

The Laotian Rock Rat. Thought to be extinct for 11 million years, this early mammal was discovered in 1996.

The Lazarussuchus. This very small crocodile was common the late Triassic period and was assumed to have gone extinct about 170 million years ago. So far two living varieties have been discovered, the first in 1982.

Gracilidris. This species of 20 million year old ants, thought to be extinct, was discovered by a team of scientists in Brazil in 2006.

The Dawn Redwood. A small cluster of this extinct prehistoric redwood tree was discovered in 1944 in China by Zhan Wang.

The Wollemi Pine. This tree was only know from fossils between 2 and 90 million years old until it was discovered alive in 1994.

The Chacoan Peccary.  This small piglike animal was only known from the fossil record until scientists discovered living specimens in 1975.

The Mountain Pygmy Possum. Australia’s only hibernating marsupial, this little animal was only known from fossils until its discovery in 1966. It is currently facing extinction once again due to global climate change.

Are all cryptids examples of reappearing animals? It is completely possible that no cryptids are examples of reappearing animals.

It’s just as possible, however, that at least some of them might well be living examples of animals thought to be long gone from planet Earth, animals that may well one day turn up as live specimens.

In the meantime, just knowing that such animals are regularly found is enough to keep cryptozoologists actively looking for more of them.

Source: examiner