"In Search of the Unknown", Book 5, by Robert W. Chambers

1 year ago
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Chapter 18-21: The Long Lost Thermosaurus of Long Island

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0:00:00 Chapter 18
0:13:25 Chapter 19
0:40:03 Chapter 20
0:48:17 Chapter 21
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Of course none of the prehistoric creatures mentioned ever existed. Of course, modern paleontology as we recognize it was still rather young at the time this story was written, so he wasn't violating any known science of his time, he had great liberty to concoct whatever fantastical notions he cared to. Always fun to see what people in a given time period fantasized regarding things that we today know have a much better and deeper understanding of. And of course, people one or two hundred years from now will look back on our literature with the same curiosity :)

Other than Long Island, the specific locales mentioned on Long Island are fictional - there is no West Oyster Bay, no Pine Inlet, no Cape Albatross, no subterranean volcano immediately off the coast of Long Island, etc. All just handy plot devices with no basis whatever in reality.

The pictures used are:

Chapter 18: "Smith Point Beach and Dunes" by Mr.TinMD, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/). Since there is no such place as West Oyster Bay, or Pine Inlet, this is at least a spot on Long Island with sand dunes, so close enough to get a visual of what the setting could look like.

Chapter 19: "View from the Lighthouse" by Neil R, taken at the Montauk Point State Park, Long Island, New York. Used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/). Montauk is the extreme eastern tip of Long Island, but it's a nice view looking out over the ocean, as our watchers here would be doing. Just not necessarily from this altitude, but if they had had a lighthouse to operate from, they would have!

Chapter 20: Kenneth Campbell, now curator of birds at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, standing with a cut-out of the fossilized bird he found in 1980, from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

Chapter 21: from "The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep". Since there were no dinosaurs that were simultaneously marine and aerial, and the only real creature that are both are a few types of absurd looking fowl (quack! quack!), I didn't have any good choices to work with for a depiction. No artists seem to have taken up the challenge of doing illustrations for Chambers' work here, so not much at all to work with for this one...

To follow along: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18668/18668-h/18668-h.htm#XVIII

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