KERATOSAURUS.

Shannon News, 2 March 1928, Page 3

KERATOSAURUS.

AN ARCTIC MONSTER,

HUGE AS TEN ELEPHANTS,

“And, now, will you believe in the name of our Lord, that I qnd 10 of my Indians saw again, on Christmas afternoon, Leemore's terrible monster! As big as 10 elephants, it passed like .a hurricane aeross the frozen:. river, smashing immense blocks of thick ice into the air. Its long bristles were covered with hoar-frost, and its immense red eyes flamed in the twilight. The monster held in its mouth a caribou of close to 700 pounds, while it careered at 20 miles per hour! ” Such are the first mention and first description —both from Alaska of the Keratosaurus of the Arctic circle, gigantic prehistoric creature that is non again exciting Russian sportsmen and scientists along with the discovery of an unsuspected mountain range m North-Eastern Siberia, which may be its home. Maps of Siberia will have to be changed by the discovery of this newlynamed Chersk range, 620 miles long, •ISO miles wide, and covering an area greater than the Caucasus (writes Sterling Heilig in the Springfield Republican). They have been found by the explorer Obruchev, sent by the Soviet Government in 1926 to investigate the unknown regions beyond Yakutsk, east of the river Lena.

“This was probably the last great mountain range remaining to be discovered on the globe,” say the Russian papers. Will the Russian geological survey and academy of sciences, sending special expeditions to it, come on authentic facts about the giant Saurian? Of course, there seems to* be no possibility to capture a terrible monster “as big as ten elephants.” To kill it, even, high explosive shells would be necessary, according to Lelouvier, who went out after the Keratosaurus in the first Russian excitement about ter. years ago. Lelouvier, “the unkillable,” along with Prince Scipione Borghese and Goddard, had done Paris-Pckin in specially constructed motor-cars. Another 'great sport was- the French Georges Dupuy, veteran correspondent of the Paris Auto, who brought back the original full story of the Keratosaurus from Alaska, studied by Lelouvier and the others for their expedition. The Duke of Westminster .certainly believed in the “Partridge Creek Monster,” and his Franco-English combination actually decided with a San Francisco banker nawed Butler that an ostensible shooting trip - woiild quietly extend to the McQueston River in tlie Yukon, where the Klayalcuk Indians waited round the post of Armstrong Creek until the good Jesuit Father Lavagneux should give the word “They come! ” FIRST STORY TO EUROPE.' Here came the first Alaskan story to Europe. In particular, there was a miner of the Yukon, Tom Leemore, who —along with this Georges Dupuv, banker, Butler, and Father Lavagneux himself —beheld the Keratosaurus in his rage, and photographed him when he kicked an avalanche of rocks close to their heads! Pig-headedly, Leemore confided the print to Father Lavagneux alone, “to interest some‘rich and serious European sport,” and insisted that “none of those Dawson crooks shall set eyes on it!” So, the Duke of Westminster's friends had equally the account of how the monster was seen again, with a caribou in its mouth, in the letter herein already quoted at the outset, from the trustworthy Jesuit missionary to George's Dupuy, after the latter’s return to Paris. If the great story is believable, it seems to have finally on closed the photograph of Leemore! Letter, jihotograph, and good faith ol Dupuy were never doubted in Paris Three times the" sporting correspondent of the Auto visited the Klondike, and his tale was as follows: — DUPUY TELLS HIS TALE. Butler, the San Francisco banker, buying gold claims in Dawson, met Dupuy at McQueston post, for a week's hunting. It was July. -Taking coffee on the porch of Father Lavagneux, Butler came hurrying to them, much agitated.

“Do you lsnow that there are prehistoric giant flesh-eating lizards alive up here?” were his first words. Dupuy did not laugh, because lie saw Father Lavagneux listen with sober interest “Last night, Grant, myself, and the Indians went after three moose, ” he gaid, “Suddenly, the male moose let out a bellow and off they went at breakneck speed. What could it lie? At the moose-leak we saw the prodigy! Fresh in the mud was the print of a gigantic body. The belly made a gully four feet deep, fifty feet long, and perhaps twenty* feet wide. Four vast feet, nearly two yards across, had made a lot of prints. Horrifying, above all, was a pile of greenish, wine-coloured manure, smoking fresh, three cubic yards wide! Jt was the excrement of no possible living, animal—and not produced by the digestion of vegetable matter!” Next morning the priest, Dupuy, Butler, and Leemore went to the tracks, accompanied by the Indians.

“At noon we had given up expecting anything, when down came suddenly an avalanche of rocks, amid such roaring and snorting that made the earth tremble—and we saw it! Keratosaurus with the colic is an Apocalyptic sight! The prehistoric thing, black, bulkier than six elephants, Tanyhow, lurched down the ravine beyond us, sweeping rocks aside like pebbles. We stood petrofied. ‘The Kcratosaurus of the Arctic Circle! ’ babbled Father Lavagneux. In full daylight, you have seen the Eiffel Tower? So, I have seen the monster of Jurassic times—from its hairy belly hung, clods of mud as big as ten-yearrcld children!” “No use to shoot lead at such a fellow! V said Leemore, as he is claimed to have taken the snapshot. “To kill it would require high explosive shells!” said Lelouvier, when

ibis story got to Russia and was confirmed by Siberian native hunters. TRAYELLING ABOUT. The monster disappeared from Alaska —the Duke of Westminster’s combination never got at it. Appearing soon after in Siberia, it would seem to travel back and forth across Behring Strait, when the ice is thick enough between the islands. How, then, did the Kcratosaurus equally disappear from l Siberia, when Lelouvier and friends Iwent after it? Some say, of course, that the prehistoric monster actually sleeps for ten-year periods —being an astounding sole survivor in this manner! But to-day the Russians believe that the Thing takes refuge in its real home—in the hithorto-unknown Chcrski range of mountains just discovered by Obruehcy, official explorer, sent, into , unknown Siberia by the Soviets. The { Gherski range (greater in area than the Caucasus) lies between East Siberia and the Pacific coast adjoining Alaska. And the Keratosaurus is again reported bv Siberian natives, just as the Oharski mountains arc discovered!