I decided to go ahead and start with this one, as the rest of my research material is all on my laptop and said laptop is not hooked up to the internet while my home computer is. Plus, this article was the one that finally inspired me to write a blog, the straw that broke the camel's back, if you will, because I read and started to write about it, then realized that I was tired of doing all this research and writing that nobody was getting to read.
This morning, I got on the internet as I do most every morning to look at the current events, and what should my eyes behold but the heading "The Web is excited by 'monster' mystery." Needless to say, my interest was instantly grabbed. I clicked on the link, and the following article came up on my screen:

The Montauk Monster 2.0

by Mike Krumboltz  May 13, 2009 12:33:19 PM

Just when you thought it was safe to take a romantic walk along the beach, another Montauk Monster washes up on the shores of Long Island.

Another, you say? Yes: Last year, the original Monster caused a huge stir across the Web. Nobody knew what it was, but reports indicated it was big, bloated, beaked, and rather gross-looking. Naturally, onlookers 
couldn't turn away then, and they can't turn away now. (If you're feeling brave and you haven't eaten in a while, check out the story and images from Newsday.)

After Fox News and several other publications reported the latest Monster discovery, queries on the corpulent carcass roared like an angry wildebeest. Within 24 hours, searches on "what is the montauk monster" (a very good question) and "montauk monster pictures" were both red-hot.

Additionally, blogs are now chiming in with their theories on the creature's origin.  Was it planted by pranksters? For what it's worth, the urban legend experts at Snopes.com write that there seems to be "no consensus" as to whether the original Monster was real, photoshopped, or just a very large raccoon.

Want to decide for yourself? Beware — even for the Internet, these guys are pretty gross.

When I clicked on the link to view the actual picture of the monster, I was taken to the following article:

'Montauk Monster' sighting on Southold beach

BY SOPHIA CHANG |sophia.chang@newsday.com

9:53 PM EDT, May 13, 2009

A report of a second Montauk Monster washing up on a Southold beach has conjured memories of the strange finding on the East End last summer. (www.montauk-monster.com / May 13, 2009)

It's back.

Just in time for summer, Long Island's latest fad-slash-biological freak show once again is in all of its bloated, pallid glory.

Reports of a Montauk Monster washing up on a Southold beach are circulating after the montauk-monster.com blog posted pictures and video last week of what looks like a beaked, four-legged animal's carcass.

Nicky Papers, 24, a culinary school student from West Islip who runs the blog, said a couple from Southold contacted him after they saw the carcass on the Founders Landing Park shore last Wednesday.

Papers said he and a friend drove there and saw a 3-foot-long animal corpse with a pointy snout and hoofs lying in the surf.

"It smelled horrible," Papers said. "It's like nothing I've ever seen before. I don't think the pictures do it justice."

Papers said the couple shoved the carcass with a stick into a garbage bag and took it to an undisclosed Southold location.

Attempts to contact the Southold couple were unsuccessful, and Papers said he did not want to reveal their identity without their permission.

Last July, three Montauk friends said they found an animal corpse, eventually dubbed the Montauk Monster, on Ditch Plains Beach.


I have a few things to say about this latest discovery.

First of all, there is no way that this thing is an over-sized raccoon, as said animals do not have beaks, nor do they have flippers, and it is clear to me from the picture above that the discovered creature does not have hooves, but flippers. If hooves were the case, it would be nothing more than a rotted away horse carcus that somehow managed to fall into the water and wash up on shore.

If it were that, though, how do you explain the beak, as horse's have a rounded skeletal structure at the snout? It is also not an over-sized platypus, the conclusion of which some skeptics may leap to when the raccoon theory is shot down. Allow me to remind you skeptics that platypuses, while having flippers, don't have beaks either. They have bills, which are rounded, not pointed.

I believe, after some research, that the creature which washed up on the shore of Montauk is a deceased Dolichorhynchops, a polycotylid plesiosaur from the Late Cretaceous of North America. As you will see in the picture depicting this creature at the link below, Doli, for short, has a bill identical to the one found on the Montauk Monster, as well as flippers and the same body shape.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolichorhynchops

Now, while Doli is just under 10 feet in length when full grown, as has been proven by the skeletal discover of Marion Bonner in the early 1950s, this creature is only three feet in length, meaning that it would have to be a younger member of the species.

Does this mean that more of these creatures are out there, perhaps even breeding? It would seem so, especially since this is the second discovery in recent years of these strange looking creatures.

Only more research and study will tell in time, but I believe it to be further evidence that such "Loch Ness Monsters" are still among us.