![]() Andrews in Scotland, says the sea monk is just one of his many forays into monster mysteries. Paxton, a statistical ecologist and marine biologist at the University of St. They also offered their own take on its true identity. Paxton, who, along with a colleague, published in 2005 a full accounting of their research into the sea monk’s origins. That description was unearthed by Charles G.M. It was described as almost eight-feet-long, having mid-body fins, a tail fin, a black head, and a mouth on its ventral side.Ī published account in the 1770s-which drew upon the Renaissance scholars’ work- described it as an animal with “a human head and face, resembling in appearance the men with shorn heads, whom we call monks because of their solitary life but the appearance of its lower parts, bearing a coating of scales, barely indicated the torn and severed limbs and joints of the human body.” None of the naturalists of the day who drew or discussed the animal had ever actually laid eyes on the sea monk specimen. The actual circumstances of its discovery have never been well-documented. Sometime between 15, the peculiar sea monk washed up on a beach near, or was caught in the Oresund, the strait between modern-day Denmark and Sweden. The sea monk is just one of a host of creepy monsters and ghoulish visuals culled from rare and antique books and curated this month on the website PageFrights by the Smithsonian Libraries and other archives, museums and cultural institutions around the world to share for Halloween. These rare books are all held in the collections of the Smithsonian Libraries and have been digitized for public viewing. The creature was also included in a 1558 volume of the widely-read and respected Renaissance natural history encyclopedia, Historiae Animalium, which was compiled by Conrad Gesner, a Swiss physician and professor. The sea monk was first described by a French naturalist and ichythyologist, Pierre Belon, in 1553, and again by a French colleague, Guillaume Rondelet, in 1554. ![]() The lack of an answer has given scientists and folklore-loving researchers something to chew on over the years. ![]() Whatever it was, it was never definitively identified. Drawings of the half-man, half-fish “monster” appeared in naturalists’ tomes and were circulated among naturalists and members of royal courts across the continent. It was the end of the Renaissance, when Europeans were enamoured with art, science, philosophy and exploring the natural world.īut over the centuries, the creature, and talk of it, faded into obscurity. In the 16th century, the so-called “sea monk” became the talk of Europe.
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