Moving onto a new subject

[plankmaker]

Now that we have the zombie subject squared away, lets move onto sea monsters:

Some are just little fishies that no one had ever seen before:

Richmond Dispatch.
Friday morning......March 22, 1861.
Strange Fish.
--A strange specimen of the fish kind, known as the "Sea Horse," was caught in the Rappahannock River, Va., a few weeks since. The creature is about five inches in length, has the body and tail of a water dragon, and the well-formed neck and head of a horse. Fins are in the place of ears upon the head, also along the back, and underneath the belly. It is said to be the first of its kind ever caught in the waters of Virginia. It was kept alive for three weeks, during which time it showed a fierce disposition, raising itself, when angered, and making a short, snorting noise, somewhat similar to a horse. It has been placed in the Smithsonian Institution, at Washington, for exhibition.

Some seem to have been brought upon by over consumption:

[Fayetteville Observer, September 6, 1826.]
Perhaps the favorite of the tall stories was that of the sea monster. Sometimes it was a monstrous snake with great tusks, sometimes breathing fire, sometimes spitting poison; occasionally it had the head and shoulders of a man and the tail of a fish. The sea monster which the Hillsborough Recorder of July 17, 1845, described was an ordinary creature in comparison to most. It was "fifteen feet long and covered with a spotted coat of hair. . . . The head and neck appeared like a lion's or bull's without horns. . . . His tail appeared like that of a large fish, but here all likeness to the finny tribe ended."

Then there are the literary ones:

http://digital.library.cornell.edu/c...image;seq=0147

The investigated ones:

http://digital.library.cornell.edu/c...s;frm=frameset

I won't even get into the mechanical ones.

Mark Campbell
Piney Flats, TN

[sbl]

...bigger too.

[lincolnsguard]

You wouldn't happen to have a period source for "Sea Monkeys" would you?

[Tiger_rifles]

OK Plankmaker,
I already carry a sharpened tent stake and a couple silver musket balls, I would say a good butte-stroke to the head would stop most zombies, but what do I have to do to stop a SEA MONSTER?!?!?!

p.s. If you need an "aide-da-campe" for your new impression let me know! Also, I am almost complete of my "troll" impression! maybe we can setup a work-weekend or two for digging the cave! P.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/...&id=1461759326

[plankmaker]

Geeze Scott,

That is a Ichthyosaurus. They were well known in the waters off of NY and New England during and prior to the Civil War. Get with the program.

Paul,

Along with the Old Fogey Club impression, we are currently in the development of a zombie impression for New Market. We believe that the documentation of zombies during the Civil War is as sufficient or moreso than the presence of Pancho Villa or WWI Germans at that said event to support the participation of a zombie battalion.

As for defense against a sea monster, all I can say is not to follow the Ahab model. That didn't work out so well.

Mark Campbell
Piney Flats, TN

Conybeare, William Daniel
(b. London, England, June 1787; d, Llandaff, Wales, 12 August 1857),
geology.

Conybeare was the younger son of Rev. William Conybeare, rector of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, London. He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. On marrying in 1814, he took a curacy in Suffolk, became rector of Sully (Glamorganshire) in 1822, took his family living as vicar of Axminster (Devon) in 1836, and became dean of Llandaff in 1845. An early member (1811) of the Geological Society of London, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1832. In addition to his scientific work he published works on biblical and patristic theology and was Bampton lecturer at Oxford in 1839.

Conybeare was one of the most active early members of the “Oxford school” of geology and was a close associate of William Buckland. He was one of the most able British exponents of the synthesis of progressionism and catastrophism, which dominated geology in the 1820’s and 1830’s.
His most important single work was his great enlargement and improvement of William Phillips’ compilation of English stratigraphy. This created a synopsis of stratigraphical knowledge that was at the time unrivaled in detail and accuracy (1). In the general introduction to the Outlines, Conybeare considered the range of “actual causes” but regarded them as inadequate to explain such phenomena as the “diluvium” (glacial drift) and the form of valleys; for these he proposed diluvial explanations, although without stressing any concordance with the scriptural Flood. The Outlines described British stratigraphy back to the Carboniferous and was termed “Part I”; Adam Sedgwick was to have assisted Conybeare with a second volume on the earlier strata, but it was never published. Conybeare collaborated with Buckland in a stratigraphical memoir on the coal fields around Bristol (2) that was much admired as a model of clear description and reasoned inference; he also attempted a general correlation with Continental stratigraphy and tectonics (3).

Some fragmentary fossil remains from the Lias of Lyme Regis prompted Conybeare’s main work in paleontology. From a detailed comparison of normal reptiles and the highly aberrant Ichthyosaurus, he inferred that the new remains were intermediate in anatomy. This reconstruction of the Plesiosaurus, which excited great interest, was later confirmed by the discovery of a more complete skeleton (4). His functional anatomy clearly was modeled on Cuvier; but he stressed the interest of intermediate forms as “links in the chain” of organisms, showing, however, by an explicit rejection of Lamarck’s transmutation, that the chain was that of an échelle des êtres, not an evolutionary series.

Conybeare’s exposition of the catastrophist-progressionist synthesis was both more able and more moderate than that of Buckland. He argued in 1829 that the fluvial erosion postulated by Lyell for the valleys of central France was inadequate to explain the form of the valleys of the Thames and other British rivers and suggested that the more powerful agency of a “diluvial” episode was required to account for them (5). He defended the progressionist viewpoint on directional climatic change against the criticisms of John Fleming (6) and later (1830–1831) wrote one of the most important defenses of the whole progressionist synthesis in answer to the more radical attack of Lyell’s Principles of Geology (7). The moderate and flexible character of his catastrophism is shown, however, by his skepticism about Élie de Beaumont’s theory of the parallel and paroxysmal elevation of mountain ranges: here he not only criticized the hasty generalization of the theory and its inapplicability to British geology but also emphasized the slow and gradual nature of many—though not all—tectonic movements (. His presidency of the Geology Section of the British Association in 1832 gave him an opportunity to review the general progress of the science (9). Here, and later in an important letter to Lyell (10), he expounded his own theoretical viewpoint. This combined an actualistic method in geology with an acceptance of occasional paroxysmal episodes, the overall trend of earth history being one of progressive diminution in the intensity of geological processes coupled with a progressive rise in the complexity of the organic world, culminating in the appearance of man.


Name: Edward Drinker Cope

Region: Philadelphia and its Countryside/Lehigh Valley

County Location: Philadelphia

Marker Location: 2100 - 02 Pine Street, Philadelphia

Dedication Date: November 06, 2002

Credit: Courtesy of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Ewell Sale Stewart Library

Eight-year-old Edward Drinker Cope was fascinated by the fossilized remains in the display at Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences (the Academy). In his copybook he sketched one particularly toothy specimen - the ichthyosaurus - and described it as a monstrous sea lizard. Cope developed a lifelong passion for paleontology (the study of fossils), becoming a great "dinosaur hunter" and one of the nineteenth century's leading paleontologists. Known for his ego, intelligence, and temper, he was a remarkable and prolific scholar who found thousands of fossils, named more than 1,200 vertebrate species, and published some 1,400 papers. Cope discovered and named over sixty new dinosaur species alone, approximately half of all those then known to scientists. Based on his observations and the evolutionary ideas of French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829), he also developed the theory known as "Cope's Law," which states that animal and plant lines tend to get bigger over time. Although his theory came under serious attack in the 1970s, in recent years some scientists have begun to reexamine its plausibility.

Cope was born into a wealthy Philadelphia Quaker family on July 28, 1840. Attending Quaker schools, he learned about natural history and science through self-study and from trips to the Academy. His father wanted him to be a farmer, but Cope was interested in natural history. In 1859, he worked at the Academy as a volunteer re-cataloguing the herpetological collection (reptiles and amphibians). During the Civil War, Cope studied and trained with noted Pennsylvania paleontologists Spencer F. Baird (1823-1887), at the Smithsonian Institution, and Dr. Joseph Leidy (1823-1891), at the University of Pennsylvania. By age twenty-two, Cope was recognized as one of the nation's reptile experts. In 1865, he became a curator at the Academy and briefly served as the chair of comparative zoology and botany at Haverford College, and there began to analyze fossilized dinosaur bones from archeological digs in New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia.


Cope also participated in the government-sponsored expeditions to the West that took place in the decades following the Civil War. From 1871 to 1879, he worked with one of the four U.S. geological surveys, visiting fossil fields where he discovered and named dozens of new dinosaur species and demonstrated that the "age of mammals" began earlier than scholars had previously thought. This work earned him an international reputation, numerous honors, and the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1896.

One of the nation's great bone hunters, Othniel Marsh played a pivotal role...
Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Brady-Handy Photograph Collection. In the 1870s, Cope became involved in an acrimonious public feud with his rival, O.C. Marsh of Yale University. Both men were ambitious, and they used their work on the western scientific expeditions to jockey for position as the nation's new leading paleontologist. As the competition grew more and more vicious, they hired away each other's bone hunters, stole fossils, and attacked each other's work. In 1869, the simmering dispute exploded into the so-called

[plankmaker]

In case you needs visuals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxi-e6ShZz0

Mark Campbell
Piney Flats, TN

[Rob Weaver]

In "Civil War Fantastic" there's a great story about the Confederates using "reanimates:" soldiers put together and brought back to life with Dr Frankenstein's method. Really neat story (If you need written documentation for your impression)
I, for one, would gladly campaign until my feeble old body breaks down for a chance to shoot at a mess of Confederate reanimates.

[Spinster]

Y'all boys jess hain't rat


please please please make sure I get an event invitation

[brown30741]

Scott,
Please post only original documentation on such serious matters. Just because the sketch was done by such a high end reproducer as Mr Charles Childs does NOT make it proof for this topic. Primary sources, please, not just your showing off repro gear.

[plankmaker]

Yeah show off, neener, neener, neener.

Mark Campbell
Piney Flats, TN