Globster
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A globster, or blob, is an unidentified organic mass that washes up on the shore of an ocean or other body of water. It is distinguished from a normal beached carcass by lacking bones or other recognisable structures. 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.
The term globster 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."
Many globsters have initially been described as gigantic octopuses, although they later turned out to be the decayed carcases 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 are supposed to be the victims of pathological skepticism, because the scientific community has refused to look at them until after they have decomposed too much to ever possibly be good enough as evidence for a new species, or has outright destroyed them, 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.
The final scene of the 1960 film La Dolce Vita depicts a group of partygoers discovering a globster on the beach at sunrise.
In the 2004 novel Der Schwarm or The Swarm by Frank Schätzing, globsters are portrayed as an intelligent alien life form, the Yrr.
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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)
- 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] 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]
