hammerhead salamander

this species of salamander is supposed to be extinct.does anbody know if this is real or if this certain type is no longer extinct?

www.cryptozoology.com...









[edit on 9-17-2004 by ProudAmerican]

"This enormous salamander was invented by the author, Greg Bear, but he mentions Diplocaulus and Gerrothorax as the real life inspiration. "


www.diterlizzi.com...

That picture is fascinating! I have no info on it though-sorry. Its head is too symetrical to be a mutation, so it must be natural. What sort of a purpose would a head that large serve?

Originally posted by firedog
this species of salamander is supposed to be extinct.does anbody know if this is real or if this certain type is no longer extinct?

The organism that this looks like, as someone else pointed out, is Diplocaulus, which, although an amphibian, is not a 'salamander'.

Here is a photo from Dr. Reisz's site

showing the bones that make up the skull of Diplocaulus. viewed dorsally

now viewed ventrally:

Notice the site for the articulation of the neck, hidden by the 'tabular horns'.
Also, in the cryptid photo, the eyes look to be somewhat on the sides of the head, moreso than in the fossil above.

here is the abstract for a paper on diplo. The article is from the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology

Larry F. Rinehart and Spencer G. Lucas, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 2001, 21(4):803-806
The Diplocaulidae have broad, flattened skulls with large tabulars
forming posteriorly or posterolaterally projecting horns.
The body is short, the tail long, and there are four digits on the
manus and five on the pes.

It doesn't look like the photo has five toes, but it does have four fingers.

here
It was about 3 feet (1 m) long.

Which I take to be for the adult. Other sites have it slightly smaller


ignoring the colouring, this museum reconstruction shows an entirely different relationship between the crest bones and the body. The site for it also compares the organism to a very small dog. Problem is, this photo doesn't really have anything to indicate scale, that could be a pretty big bucket, tho perhaps the grass blades can give a decent idea.

as does this


here is another recontstruction


Most reconstructions seem to show, if nothing else, the 'horns' not meeting directly with the neck.

seeking soul:
What sort of a purpose would a head that large serve?

the apaper i referencedd above also references this:
Cruickshank, A. R. I., and B. W. Skews. 1980. The functional signifi-cance of nectridian tabular horns. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 209:513�537.

Quoting Rhinehart and Lucas on Cruickshank et al:
the horns functioned
as an effective hydrofoil that could help provide the agility
necessary for active predation. They note that the horn growth
process would have helped to enforce ecological separation of
the predaceous adults maneuvering and feeding in mid-water
from the juveniles who were more suited to habitation of the
shallows. Thus, cannibalism of the juveniles would be reduced.
They also agreed with Beerbower (1963) that the horns probably
supported a pharyngeal pouch used as an accessory respiratory
organ. They put forth the idea that the younger animals
may have relied somewhat on cutaneous respiration. As overall
growth lowered their surface-to-volume ratio, accessory respiratory
organs would have become necessary. At some transitional
size, the tabular horns would expand rapidly to accommodate
the now-essential pharyngeal pouch

Based primarily on the other reconstructions and the fossil skull I am going to say that this is not Diplo. However, the question remains, photoshopped or weird organism? Some people in one forum thought it was a larval tiger salamander, that the feathery gills on the side of the head of that organism had clumped together to give it this appearance.


[size=-4]copyright Mr. John White

Don't know about that, seems rather unlikely.

The main, and reccurent problems with cryptid photos is that they really don't contain any info. No attribution here, no infomation as to what continent it was found in, and nothing good to indicate scale. This would be an interesting find, but the lack of any information makes the photo pretty useless. I'm going to bet hoax. Could be wrong.

Consensus over at Cryptozoology is that the thing is a toy and possibly a repaint of the Japanese Sega corporation toy series:
www.cryptozoology.com...

Google search turns up lots of these:
images.google.com...