Globster
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A globster, or blob, is an unidentified organic mass that washes up on the shoreline of an ocean or other body of water. The term was coined by Ivan T. Sanderson in 1962 to describe the Tasmanian carcass of 1960, which was said to have "no visible eyes, no defined head, and no apparent bone structure". A globster is distinguished from a normal beached carcass by being hard to identify, at least by initial untrained observers, and by creating controversy as to its identity.
Globsters may present such a puzzling appearance that their nature remains controversial even after being officially identified by scientists. Some globsters lack bones or other recognisable structures, while others may have bones, tentacles, flippers, eyes or other features that can help narrow down the possible species. In the past these were often described as sea monsters, and myths and legends about such monsters may often have started with the appearance of a globster. Globsters are most frequently studied in the field of cryptozoology.
Many globsters have initially been described as gigantic octopuses, although they later turned out to be the decayed carcasses of whales or large sharks. As with the "Chilean Blob" of 2003, many are masses of whale blubber which have been released from decaying whale corpses. Others initially thought to be dead Plesiosaurs later turned out to be the decayed carcases of basking sharks. Others remain unexplained. Giant and colossal squid may also explain some globsters, particularly those which are tentatively identified as monster octopuses.
Some globsters have only been examined after they had decomposed too much to be used as evidence for a new species, or have been destroyed, as happened with the famous "Cadborosaurus willsi" carcass, found in 1937. However, Canadian scientists did in fact perform a DNA analysis of the Newfoundland Blob which indicated that the tissue was from a sperm whale. In their resulting paper, the authors point out a number of superficial similarities between the Newfoundland Blob and other famous globsters, concluding a similar origin for those globsters is likely.
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[edit] Famous globsters
Listed in chronological order of discovery.
- St. Augustine Monster (1896)
- Dunk Island Carcass (1948)
- Melbourne-Hobart Carcass (1958)
- Tasmanian Globster (1960)
- New Zealand Globster (1968)
- Tasmanian Globster 2 (1970)
- Mann Hill Beach Globster (1970)
- Bermuda Blob (1988)
- Godthaab Globster (1989)
- Hebrides Blob (1990)
- Bermuda Blob 2 (1995)
- North Carolina Globster (1996)
- Nantucket Blob (1996)
- Bermuda Blob 3 (1997)
- Four Mile Globster (1997)
- Newfoundland Blob (2001)
- Chilean Blob (2003)
[edit] In popular culture
In Lawrence Person's science fiction story "Gabe's Globster" (Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2008), a globster found by a beachcomber turns out to be a Lovecraftian entity.
[edit] Sources
- Bousfield, Edward L. & Leblond Paul H. (2000). Cadborosaurus: Survivor from the Deep. Heritage House Publishing.
- Clark, Jerome and Coleman, Loren. (1999). Cryptozoology A-Z. Simon & Schuster.
- Ellis, R. 1994. Monsters of the Sea. Robert Hale, London.
- McCalmont, Jonathan. Book Review on StrangeHorizons.com[1]
