“During the war the tanks were used for destruction and death. With the arrival of peace the tremendous power of their caterpillar traction has been turned to many varied purposes, but no one anticipated that they would ever be put to such a curious use as this.”

Ah…the memories of Saturday mornings watching Godzilla stomp on tiny tanks.

From “The Bee” out of Danville, Virginia dated 4-20-1922:

The correspondence with the expedition sent to Patagonia under the auspices of the Buenos Aires Zoo are now writing back in a jocular strain announcing that the expedition never expected to find the plesiosaurus or anything resembling it. They are hunting another specimen, a giant edentate belonging to the armadillo family, similar to the one found in Patagonia in 1898. If it is found, it will not even have the virtue of being a novelty, since thousands of people have seen the mounted one in the’ La Plata museum. The animal which is sought bores and burrows in the earth and could never exist in the waters of a lake.

The curator of the Buenos Aires zoo always contended that he never said the plesiosaurus existed, but he gave it the first publicity when he reported that a swan-necked monster with an alligator body, swimming in a Patagonian lake, had been seen, and his statement that the description answered that of a plesiosaurus led a news agency to announce the discovery of a live plesiosaurus. The belief that the prehistoric monster might exist led to popular subscription, wherewith the expedition was financed. Correspondents report that the public was purposely fooled by the members of the expedition and appear to think it a huge joke.

So far the expedition has not even sought the armadillo, which is said to be its object. The expedition has spent its time near a small lake awaiting the appearance of a. strange giant red octopus, which, it is reported, has been scaring Indian women washing clothes on the banks of the lake
Clemente Onelli has his little joke at the expense of the world and his plesiosaurus has far outlived the span of life of none-day enders and was one of the best human interest news sources South America has known, but the expedition now has shed its romantic atmosphere of mysteries and assumed its a true character, which is that of an ordinary zoological expedition, and an unimportant one at that.

Craig Heinselman
Peterborough, NH

Here is a snippet of an April 28, 1922 article on other ideas. It is a little tongue-in-cheek, but is only one of several around the time outlining the alternative theory:

Most Likely.
Not a pleasionsaurus at all, but possibly a somewhat lees belated megatherium, or a horny plated glyptodon, is Professor Onelli’s latest conjecture as to the strange creature seen by Mr. Sheffield in the Chubut wilds of Patagonia. As the question is thus seen to be still open, we suggest with some diffidence the possibility that it may have been a lepidodendron, a paralleiepipedon, or a demijohn, -From the Columbus Dispatch-

From Davenport Democrat And Leader, The Friday, April 28, 1922 Davenport, Iowa

Craig Heinselman
Peterborough, NH

And it’s strange that they would refer to the animal having “tracks” and moving “like a crocodile”. If it was a plesiosaur on land it would probably drag and shuffle itself along like seals do. The only “tracks” to speak of would be a furrow with marks along its length on either side.