St. Augustine Monster

The carcass as it appeared after being dug out of the sand.

The St. Augustine Monster was a large unidentified carcass, originally postulated to be the remains of a gigantic octopus, that washed ashore near St. Augustine, Florida in 1896. It is sometimes referred to as the Florida Monster or St. Augustine Giant Octopus, and is one of the earliest recorded examples of a globster. The species that the carcass supposedly represented has been assigned the pseudoscientific binomial names "Octopus giganteus" (Latin: giant octopus) and "Otoctopus giganteus" (Greek prefix: oton = ear; giant eared octopus), although these are not valid under the rules of the ICZN. Recent analysis suggests that it was the remains of a large whale, likely a sperm whale.

Discovery

The earliest surviving photograph of the St. Augustine carcass, taken on December 7, 1896. For a long time considered lost, it was obtained by Gary Mangiacopra in 1994.

Drawing made by A. E. Verrill based on the above image.

Drawing by A. E. Verrill, based on a photograph, showing the apparent arm stumps.

A fanciful depiction of the Florida "sea monster" published in the Pennsylvania Grit.

Dr. DeWitt Webb beside the remains.

The carcass in the process of being hauled further inland.

Comparison of the connective tissues of a squid, an octopus, and the St. Augustine carcass, as viewed under polarised light (Gennaro, 1971).

Transmission electron micrographs of sections of the Bermuda Blob (left) and St. Augustine carcass (Pierce et al., 1995).

The carcass was first spotted on the evening of November 30, 1896, by two young boys, Herbert Coles and Dunham Coretter, while bicycling along Anastasia Island. The enormous mass was half buried in the sand, having sunk under its immense weight. The two boys thought the carcass was the remains of a beached whale, as a similar stranding had occured two years earlier near the mouth of the Matanzas River, located several miles to the south of St. Augustine (see map).

The two boys returned to St. Augustine the same day and reported their discovery to a local physician, Dr. DeWitt Webb. Webb, who was the founder of the St. Augustine Historical Society and Institute of Science, came to the beach the following day, December 1, 1896, to examine the remains.

His first impression was that it was the remains of an animal, very mutilated, and in an advanced state of decomposition. The carcass was very pale pink, almost white, in colour, with a silver reflection in the sunlight. It was composed of a rubbery substance of a very hard consistency, such that it could only be cut with great difficulty. The part of the carcass that was visible measured 18 feet in length and 7 feet in width. Webb estimated its weight at nearly 5 tons, if not more. He believed it was the remains of a giant octopus, as it it appeared to have the stumps of four arms, with another arm buried nearby.

In December, 1896, a storm dragged the carcass out to sea, but it washed ashore again in January, 1897, on Crescent Beach, two miles to the south of its original location. Webb sent photographs of the mass, along with a description, to Joel Asaph Allen of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. Allen apparently did not respond, but Webb's letter came to the attention of Prof. Addison Emery Verrill of Yale, at that time the foremost authority on cephalopods in the country. At first, Verrill suggested the carcass might represent the remains of a giant squid. In the January 1897 issue of the American Journal of Science he wrote:

The proportions indicate that this might have been a squid-like form, and not an Octopus. The "breadth" is evidently that of the softened and collapsed body, and would represent an actual maximum diameter in life of at least 7 feet and a probable weight of 4 or 5 tons for the body and head. These dimensions are decidedly larger than those of any of the well-authenticated Newfoundland specimens. It is perhaps a species of Architeuthis.

However, Verrill soon changed his mind about the identity of the creature. In the January 3, 1897, issue of the New York Herald, he wrote that the carcass was indeed that of a giant octopus. However, the paper did not state that Verrill was the author of the article. In the February issue of the American Journal of Science, Verrill even gave the animal a scientific name, Octopus giganteus (Verrill, 1897). However, he also added:

It is possible that it may be related to Cirroteuthis, and in that case the two posterior stumps, looking like arms, may be the remains of the lateral fins, for they seem too far back for the arms, unless pulled out of position. On the other hand, they seem to be too far forward for fins. So that they are probably arms twisted out of their true position.

However, having examined samples of the mass sent to him by Webb, Verrill concluded that "the creature cannot be an Octopus, but is of cetacean nature." He suggested that "the whole mass represents the upper part of the head of [a sperm whale], detached from the skull and jaw."

Webb decided the carcass should be moved further inland so that it would not be lost to the sea forever. With the help of "six horses and strong tackle" it was moved several miles nearer to St. Augustine, "to the terminus of a railroad," where it was protected from the tide and drifting sand. Its final resting place was South Beach, Anastasia Island, near to the hotel of Dr. George Grant. The St. Augustine carcass became somewhat of a tourist attraction and was visited by large numbers of people. It is unknown what happened to the carcass afterwards.

The St. Augustine carcass was largely forgotten until 1957, when Dr. Forrest Glenn Wood, a curator at the Marineland of Florida and a founding member of the International Society of Cryptozoology, became interested in the story after finding a yellowed newspaper clipping mentioning the creature. He learned that a sample of the integument was preserved in the Smithsonian Institution, and persuaded the curators to send a sample to his colleague, Dr. Joseph F. Gennaro Jr., a cell biologist at the University of Florida. Gennaro compared the connective tissue of the St. Augustine carcass to control specimens from known octopus and squid species. He published his findings in the March 1971 issue of Natural History:

Now differences between the contemporary squid and octopus samples became very clear. In the octopus, broad bands of fibers passed along the plane of tissue and were separated by equally broad bands arranged in a perpendicular direction. In the squid there were narrower, but also relatively broad, bundles arranged in planes of the section, separated by thin partitions of perpendicular fibers. . . . It seemed I had found the means to identify the mystery sample after all. I could distinguish between octopus and squid, and between them and mammals, which display a lacy network of connective tissue fibers. . . . After 75 years, the moment of truth was at hand. Viewing section after section of the St. Augustine sample, we decided at once and beyond any doubt, that the sample was not whale blubber. Further, the connective tissue pattern was that of broad bands in the plane of the section with equally broad bands arranged perpendicularly, a structure similar to, if not identical with, that in my octopus sample. . . . The evidence appears unmistakable that the St. Augustine sea monster was in fact an octopus, but the implications are fantastic.

Roy Mackal, a biochemist at the University of Chicago and a founding member of the International Society of Cryptozoology (as was F. G. Wood), decided to test the samples himself. In an issue of Cryptozoology in 1986, he wrote, "Gennaro carried out comparative histological examination of the tissue, and concluded that it most resembled contemporary octopus tissue. While these results were highly suggestive, further biochemical work was required for an unambiguous identification of the tissue." Mackal tested samples of the St. Augustine carcass for different amino acids and compared the results with the known amino acid composition of the tissues of a spotted dolphin, a beluga, a giant squid, and two species of octopus. He published his findings in Cryptozoology:

On the basis of Gennaro's histological studies and the present amino acid and Cu and Fe analyses, I conclude that, to the extent the preserved O. giganteus tissue is representative of the carcass washed ashore at St. Augustine, Florida, in November of 1896, it was essentially a huge mass of collagenous protein. Certainly, the tissue was not blubber. I interpret these results as consistent with, and supportive of, Webb and Verrill's identification of the carcass as that of a gigantic cephalopod, probably an octopus, not referable to any known species.

Photographs of the St. Augustine carcass were for a long time thought to be lost and drawings remained the only pictorial evidence of the event. They were finally rediscovered in 1993 by Marjorie Blakoner of California, who recognised them in an old album. Van Lockwood, one of the two original photographers of the St. Augustine carcass, kept an album of photos he had taken between 1885 to 1899. Upon his death, this was bequeathed to the St. Augustine Historical Society and Institute of Science, and later fell into the possession of Marjorie Blakoner.

Samples of the St. Augustine carcass were again examined in 1995. They were subjected to electron microscopy and biochemical analysis in what was the most thorough examination of the preserved material to date. The results of the analyses, published in the Biological Bulletin, disputed the earlier findings of Gennaro and Mackal. The samples were found to be "masses of virtually pure collagen" and not to have the "biochemical characteristics of invertebrate collagen, nor the collagen fiber arrangement of octopus mantle." The results suggest the samples are "the remains of the skin of an enormous warm-blooded vertebrate." The authors conclude that "there is no evidence to support the existence of Octopus giganteus" and concur with Verrill (1897) and Lucas (1897) that the St. Augustine carcass was "the remains of a whale, likely the entire skin [blubber layer] . . . nothing more or less."

See also

• Giant octopus
• Lusca

References

• Ellis, R. 1994. Monsters of the Sea. Robert Hale, London.
• Heuvelmans, B. 2003. The Kraken and the Colossal Octopus. Kegan Paul, London.
• Lucas, F.A. 1897. The Florida Monster. Science, New Series, 5: 476.
• Mangiacopra, G.S. 1975. Octopus giganteus Verrill: A New Species of Cephalopod. Of Sea and Shore (Spring 1975): 3-10, 51-52.
• Mangiacopra, G.S. 1976. Monster on the Florida Beach. Part One: INFO Journal 5(1): 2-6; Part Two: INFO Journal 5(2): 2-6.
• Raynal, M. 1987. Properties of Collagen and the Nature of the Florida Monster. Cryptozoology 6: 129-130.
• Verrill, A.E. 1897c. The supposed great Octopus of Florida; certainly not a Cephalopod. American Journal of Science 4th series 3: 355-356.
• Verrill, A.E. 1897d. The Florida Monster. Science New Series 5: 392.
• Verrill, A.E. 1897e. The Florida Sea-Monster. Science New Series 5: 476.
• Verrill, A.E. 1897f. The Florida Sea-Monster. American Naturalist 31: 304-307.
• Webb, D. 1897. A Large Decapod. Nautilus 10: 108.

External links

• Globsters: The St. Augustine Giant Octopus
• Le "Monstre de Floride" de 1896: Cachalot ou Pieuvre Geante? Template:Fr icon