Mystery Animal Found in India
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on June 9th, 2007
On the heels of the report of Bigfoot sightings in India reported here on Cryptomundo by Loren Coleman comes the following story of another strange discovery.
Bones of unknown animal unearthed
GOSABA (SOUTH 24-PARGANAS): The forests of the Sunderbans conceal many mysteries. It has now thrown up a new challenge to zoologists in the form of the remains of an ‘unknown’ animal that was accidentally unearthed by a farmer and his daughter on May 26.
The remains of an animal – around 11-foot-long and some five feet wide – are lying in a house of Santosh Mandol at the nondescript Manmathanagar in Gosaba’s Bipradaspur village. Santosh and his youngest daughter Shubha stumbled upon the bones while digging the banks of the pond adjacent to their house.
“My daughter saw something jutting out of the ground. When I turned to see what it was, I hit my leg against something hard. I tried to pull it out but it wouldn’t budge. Then, I dug up the place and took it out,” said Santosh.
Intrigued, the family kept digging the area for the next three days. Bones came tumbling out. They ended up unearthing more than 150 pieces of all shapes and sizes.
Forest department officials have already visited the village and seen the bones. However, they have not been able to identify the animal. “It doesn’t appear to be the remains of a crocodile or of a rhinoceros. We can rule out elephants as they never existed in the Sunderbans. I have asked the Zoological Survey of India to go to the village and find out,” said principal chief conservator of forest Atanu Raha. A fossil of a rhinoceros was found in Chhoto Mollakhali a few years ago.
Sunderbans affairs minister Kanti Ganguly has also been informed about the findings.
Initially, Santosh had thrown away the bones. But a local homoeopath, Mukut Mohan Biswas, saw the bones and asked Santosh to preserve these. Biswas brought the matter to the notice of Uttam Saha, an anthropologist and schoolteacher.
Saha informed the Gosaba police station about the findings. “When I saw the bones, I realised they weren’t remains of animals that are found in this region. I was really taken aback by the shape of the limbs. The hind legs are bigger than the forelegs. Only experts can identify this animal. We want them to visit our village and find out the truth for us,” said Saha.
He had asked Santosh to keep digging. Within three days, they had dug out almost the entire carcass apart from the skull. “It must be buried somewhere deep. These people are not experts and were digging as they wished. This might have damaged the bones. We didn’t want to take any risks,” Saha said.
The news spread like wildfire. Since last Monday, there have been a steady flow of visitors. His wife Draupadi is tired though. “Hundreds of people are coming every day. We can’t even go to the fields,” said Draupadi. People are flocking to their home from fur-flung islands to have a look at the bones. And there are already complaints of theft. Santosh complains that a few teeth have gone missing.
Police are keeping a watch on Santosh’s house. “We have asked the local police to monitor the situation and ensure that nothing goes missing,” said South 24-Parganas SP S N Gupta.Arnab Ganguly & Monotosh Chakraborty
Times News Network, India
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
Hmm. With just this much data it could be almost anything, of almost any age.
So what do the remains most resemble? It is pretty hard to get any image of what they look like considering they are alternately said to not look like a crocodile, rhinocerous, or an elephant. It seems like pretty wildly differing animals to have made comparisons to, so I am left wondering, what does the remains of something that is obviously not an elephant, rhino, or crocodile look like?
First, a determination has to be made, is it the bones of a reptile or a mammal. a DNA analysis should be relativey easy to perform, the age of the remains by radioactive sample if it is fossilized.i would like to see a picture of the Bones if it becomes available.
My bet at this point would be rhino, with all due respect to those that have seen it…of course, finding a skull should settle the matter pretty quickly…keep digging!
Hmm were they fossils or fresh bones?
From the wording in the article, it seems that they were not fossilized. But anyone’s guess is good as mine.
The Indian press occasionally runs stories about extraterrestrials that are a bit, ummm, ‘lurid’. I’d need to see photos before I started speculating about these bones.
(Sorry for the excessive negativism)
We definitely have our first skeleton of a dragon…
I am guessing that the bones are recent – not paleontological (or else they would be fossils). Eleven feet long sounds ‘size of rhinoceros’. When they say 5 feet wide do they actually mean ‘tall’?
This story is very interesting and i would definitely like to see the bones.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to want to see photos of these bones or at least some description more detailed than “It wasn’t the remains of an elephant, rhino, or crocodile.” At least tell us if they are the bones of a reptile or a mammal. I too hesitate to speculate too much on these remains without more information.
This could become very interesting. I am eager to hear more about the fact that the hind limbs are bigger than the front, a t-rex comes to mind but it doesn’t sound as if the bones were fossilized. Can’t wait to hear more!
re: “The_Carrot”
I don’t think you are being excessively negative at all. There have been a few really wild reports coming out of India, especially about UFOs. So I would take a very skeptical view too. Luckily what we have here are real bones and maybe even a skull. It should only be a matter of time until this is settled one way or another.
Well, we have alleged bones anyway. If India produces so many bogus reports, I don’t think we can even be sure that bones were really even found or if so, if they are of any sort of unknown animal. After all, there are supposed to be alian bodies that have been collected, where are they? I’ll be suspicious until I hear more.