Latest / Journey to the Fringe / I can't believe they did a sequel to Dinosaur Ghosts but this time it's Arctic Dinosaur ghosts

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I can't believe they did a sequel to Dinosaur Ghosts but this time it's Arctic Dinosaur ghosts · Journey to the Fringe

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From the unexplained to the mundane, come join
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us on a journey to the fringe. Two, Journey to
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the Fringe, where we pick episode topics based
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mostly on vibes. I think, Chelsea, do you agree
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that's mostly our thought process? You'll get
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three -quarters of the way through a script and
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you'll be like, nah, I'm not feeling it anymore.
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I'm not feeling this much. Boy, do we have so
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many three -quarter scripts. Yeah. Maybe one
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day we'll just do three -quarter episodes for
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a while. I was just going to say that sounds
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like a real shitty idea for a podcast. That we're
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not feeling. Let's do it. Well today I was feeling
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a little bit of inspiration and I found a topic
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that I quite liked and I hey Look at that it
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followed through to a whole script it hit the
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vibe now Chelsea We're both Millennials and I
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think it's fair to say that without children
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our last update on dinosaurs is probably like
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30 to 35 years ago like scientifically you're
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not Because we did have a very intellectual But
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like the actual knowledge of dinosaurs, okay,
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I have learned more about dinosaurs last year
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and man have they changed like so much since
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we were kids and i'm talking like massive things
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like you know pterodactyls chelsea i don't even
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accept these changes are you sure because i gotta
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go over a few of them pterodactyls turns out
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one there's no such thing as a pterodactyl it's
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called the pterosaur family okay and two pterosaurs
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aren't dinosaurs they're flying lizards which
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are a different thing entirely also tyrannosaurus
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is actually a family of dinosaurs called tyrannosaur
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of which t -rex falls and that falls into a larger
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group of dinosaurs called theropods. That's the
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same thing like Triceratops is part of the Ceratopsian
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family and Stegosaurus is part of the Stegosaur
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family because there's a ton of different dinosaurs
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apparently that fall into those things and like
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one of the most recognizable dinosaurs in my
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mind is Demetrodon. I'm just gonna share my screen
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quickly with you Chelsea. You don't recognize
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the name but... So how did we miss all of this?
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Because we weren't seven -year -old. at the right
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time? At the right time. Cause I was feeling
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like I have been a seven year old. Like this
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bad boy. You recognize this guy, right? Yep.
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He's the... That's Demetrodon. He lived a hundred
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million years before the dinosaurs and is a reptile,
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not a dinosaur. And also, he's closer related
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to mammals than he is to dinosaurs. Okay, so
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dinosaurs aren't mammals? No, they're different
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things. Okay, you've missed out on a lot. I've
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missed out on a lot and I've also heard it come
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up in regular everyday conversation. someone
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that listens to our podcast that they can't believe
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that I think that the woolly mammoth is a dinosaur.
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And I'm still confused about that one. I still
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feel like it's a dinosaur. So I might be the
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wrong person for this. Fair enough. I'm an millennial
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now. How am I supposed to accept new knowledge?
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That's a fair point. We are past that age where
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we accept new things. And remember it. Exactly.
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Not only accept new things, I can accept it,
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but how am I supposed to remember it? Well, Chelsea,
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you're going to remember this one. This is a
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new key fact that I learned recently too. It's
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probably the weirdest one to wrap your mind around.
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It's that dinosaurs' environments were not solely
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contained to wandering around active volcanoes.
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They ruled the entire planet, the whole freaking
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planet. So they were in the jungles, in the deserts,
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and even the Arctic. See, I do believe that,
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but I do believe there's also volcanoes very
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close to them at all times. I know, that's the
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weird thing. There's just gotta be volcanoes
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around. Yeah, you find a volcano, you find dinosaurs.
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Seriously, there were winter dinosaurs, and they
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adapted. They had larger bodies, good insulation,
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enhanced visual systems, specialized beacon teeths
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for those types of foods that they'd be finding.
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Some of them even had like warm blooded characteristics,
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different metabolic adjustments, and a specialized
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circulatory system for dealing with winter. How
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do we know that, though? Basically from bones.
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From bones. You know it from bones, okay? You
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know so much about dinosaurs. With dinosaurs
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inhabiting the most remote parts of the world,
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I realize something, Chelsea, that your episode
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on dinosaur ghosts miss, and that is the Arctic
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dinosaur ghosts i had no idea which i set out
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in search of and you found some this is incredible
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we're gonna talk about i found the closest thing
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i could to arctic dinosaur ghosts this is cutting
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-edge research that we've done our story starts
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out we're gonna be reading from some firsthand
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accounts from the 1900s as well as hammerson
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peters one of our favorite authors hammerson
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peters you do great research oh my gosh i'm so
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excited weirdly enough some of the stuff that
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i'm to be reading, he's the only person I could
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find on, which I'm a little bit worried. I don't
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like when that happens, but I do trust him. Yeah.
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Nonetheless. You know with the weird stuff, sometimes
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there's only a very specialized person that will
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talk about it. And now what? And we spread it.
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The best we can. We start in the Victorian age
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with this, Chelsea, and hand in hand with Dinomania
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of Western Academia of the 1800s, came fictional
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tales of lost worlds inhabited by primeval monsters
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that awakened Victorian imaginations almost as
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much as a lightly covered ankle. In 1864, French
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novelist Jules Verne published Journey to the
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Center of the Earth, in which scientists discovered
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subterranean oceans deep beneath Iceland, teeming
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with aquatic dinosaurs. In 1888, Canadian writer
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James de Mills' fantasy romance A Strange Manuscript
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Found in a Copper Cylinder was published posthumously
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in serial format in the Harper's Weekly magazine
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telling the story of thermally heated semi -tropical
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oases in Antarctica where dinosaurs roamed. In
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1898, English novelist C .J. Cutliffe Hine published
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The Lizard, a short story about an English gentleman
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who discovered and battled a carnivorous dinosaur
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in a cave near the English village of Kettlewell.
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The following year, American writer Warden Alan
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Curtis' science fiction short The Monster of
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Lake Lemaitre was published in the September
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issue of Pearson's magazine. Curtis' piece is
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written as the lost diary of a physician who
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discovered a living plesiosaur in a mountain
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lake in Wyoming. And in 1912, British author
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame
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published his science fiction novel The Lost
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World in which an ambitious young reporter accompanies
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an indomitable professor on an expedition to
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a remote stretch of South America's jungle which
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supports a robust population of pterodactyls.
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which again, don't exist anymore. But it is into
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this zeitgeist that pops one George de Puy. Now,
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on April 15th, 1908, an incredible article entitled
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Le Monstre de Partridge Creek, or The Monster
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of Partridge Creek, appeared in the French popular
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science magazine, Just Say 2. Later that year,
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an English translation of the same piece appears
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in the July -December 1908 edition of The Strand
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Magazine. In the British publication, this is
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a really annoying thing about it, Chelsea. It
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prints factual and fictional stories together
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in the same place. Good, I love it when they
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do that. Yeah. The Monster of Partridge Creek
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was written by Frenchman George Dupuis. He's
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a 50 year old doctor. Lived in 1858 to 1935.
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He's a hard -headed Parisian physician and anatomical
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illustrator respected in the medical community
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for his contributions to the field of combat
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surgery. 1858 they're calling it pterodactyls.
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We as Millennials have also accepted it as a
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pterodactyl and I feel like we're further away
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from that time than they are no longer considered
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pterodactyls any longer. That's just not fair.
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When something ages, it ages hard. Yep. Dupuis
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was a stampeter who participated in the Klondike
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Gold Rush in 1897. Let's get to the actual story
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itself. Yo Chelsea, this is what got published.
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With the article title, stories strange and true
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in the Strand Magazine July 1908 edition. The
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monster of Partridge Creek. This must be a part
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of the true one, not the not true stuff. That's
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the thing. They labeled it strange and true.
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And it comes immediately following an article
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written by Winston Churchill about his time in
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the army. If you're going to have something that
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has fiction and non -fiction stories in it labeling
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something as and true, you think it means that
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it's based on like actual true stories. Yeah.
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So that's yeah. No, it starts with a little bit
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of a forward just to kind of give us a background
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on this guy. M. George Dupuis. the well -known
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French writer and traveler who has made many
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explorations in the polar regions, here relates
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a most extraordinary experience which befell
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him in the frozen steppes of Alaska. M. Dupuis,
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whose good faith is beyond question, takes full
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responsibility for this narrative, which is,
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it may be noted, however remarkable in no way
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contradicts any known scientific facts. The drawings
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which accompany this article have been made from
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sketches and descriptions supplied by Dupuis.
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I think I had to put a warning. They call indigenous
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people Indians throughout this and I'm going
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to leave it way it is, just for the sake of.
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It's an old letter. It's from the 1900s. Now
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the actual article itself. The story which follows
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is in no sense a romance. I wish in the first
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place to ask the readers of the following narrative
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to believe that I am in no way attempting to
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oppose upon their credulity. Concerning the amazing
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spectacle I'm about to describe, I report nothing
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but plain facts, however astounding and apparently
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incredible they may seem at first glance, precisely
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as they appeared to my own eyes. And I am possessed
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of excellent sight, and to those of my three
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companions, all three white men, without counting
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five Indians of the Kalaikook tribe, who have
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their camp on the shores of the River Stewart.
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The following are the names of the three other
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witnesses who are ready to testify to the truth
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of my assertions. The first is my hunting companion
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for many years, Mr. James Lewis Butler, banker
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of San Francisco. The second is Mr. Tommy Lee
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Moore, miner from McQuestion River in the Yukon
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Territory. And last, the Reverend Father Pierre
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Lavigneau, a Canadian freshman and missionary
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at the Indian village of Armstrong Creek, not
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far from McQuestion. In the course of ten years
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rambling in the four quarters of the world, it
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has been my lot to witness a great number of
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amazing spectacles, and the strange experience
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of which I speak had become no more than a vivid
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recollection when, a few days ago, on January
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24th, 1908, the following letter reached me at
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Paris. It came from Father Lavineau, who passes
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his life with his sav... who passes his life
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with his savage flock 600 miles northwest of
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the Klondike. I give it here word for word. My
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dear son, the traitor of McQuestion has just
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stopped here with his train of dogs and sledges.
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He has had a good journey from Dawson by Barlow,
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Flat Creek, and Dominion. I expect to receive
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a letter by him in Fortnite from your Paris friends
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and news from the outside world. Today is the
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first day of the new year. and I want to write
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to you at once with my recollection of our hunt.
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I hope that you will give me the pleasure of
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receiving your full narrative. For the other
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and shorter one, which I wrote, in haste after
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leaving laid up in the great north, was only
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a sketch. I have received your book, the reading
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of which has given me the greatest pleasure.
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By the way, you are wrong in regard to the poor
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fellow, John Spitz. Alas, he is no longer among
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us. He died a short time ago. Worn out, I fear.
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Talking of ferocious animals. Will you allow
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me what I tell you at the end of but at the end
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of my Indians and You know, I'm in the course
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of ten years rambling in the four quarters of
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the world. It has been lot To witness a great
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number of amazing spectacles and the strange
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experiences of which I speak had become no more
11:50
than a vivid recollection when a few days ago,
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on January 24th, 1908, the following letter reached
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me at Paris. It came from Father Lavineau, who
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passes his life with the savage flock 600 miles
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northwest of the Klondike. I give it here word
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for word. My dear son, the traitor of McQuestion
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has just stopped here with his train of dogs
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and sledges. He has had a hard journey. from
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Dawson by Barlow Flat Creek and Dominion. I expect
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to receive by him in another Fortnite fresh provisions
12:16
and news of the outside world. Today is the first
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day of the new year and I want this letter to
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express my affectionate wishes for your health
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and happiness. I hope it will give me the pleasure
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of receiving you under my humble roof here at
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the other end of the earth. I will not believe
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that you will let your old friend in the great
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north leave his old carcass to the Indians. I
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have received your book, the readings of which
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have given me the greatest By the way, you are
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wrong in regard to that poor fellow John Spitz.
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Alas, he is no longer mail carrier of the Duncan
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district. Talking of ferocious animals, will
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you believe me when I tell you that ten of my
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Indians and myself saw again on Christmas Eve
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that horrible beast of Partridge Creek, passing
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like a whirlwind over the frozen surface of the
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river, breaking off with his hind feet enormous
13:01
blocks of ice from the rough surface. His fur
13:04
was covered with whore frost. His little eyes
13:06
gleamed like fire in the twilight. The beast
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held in his hand his jaw something that seemed
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to me to be a caribou. It was moving at the rate
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of more than 10 miles an hour. The temperature
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that day was 45 degrees below zero. At the corner
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of the cut -off, it disappeared. It is undoubtedly
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the same animal that we saw before, accompanied
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by Chief Stineshane and two of his sons. I followed
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the traces, which were exactly like those which
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we all saw. Lemur Butler, you and I, in the mud
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of the Moose Lick, six times on the snow. We
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were able to measure the impressions of its enormous
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body, the same size as we found it, before almost
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to the 20th of an inch. We followed them to Stewart,
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fully two miles when the snow began to fall slightly
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and blotted out the trace. It was on receipt
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of this letter that I decided to write the story
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of my own experience which it recalled so vividly
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to mind and of which I had afforded striking
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confirmation. Chelsea just because they did a
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terrible job of describing it now I think I have
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to show you the yeah I was just wondering is
14:03
that the one that you showed me who was the guy
14:05
that no Dimitra Dawn's the one I showed you Dimitra
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Dawn is not what this guy is I can start sharing
14:11
my screen because there's some fun stuff in here
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like right before the strange and true stories
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they have the child beauty pageant uh -huh and
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I don't know why they're just I guess they picked
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their favorite kids okay that's nice those are
14:24
children yep yeah And then... Oh, that last one
14:27
was a little bit worrisome. No, one more. No,
14:30
this one. Yeah, this guy. Yep. Yep. But we're
14:33
not here for this, so you guys don't get to see
14:35
those pictures. No, you definitely won't get
14:37
to see them. No, we are here for this bad boy
14:39
right here, who is definitely a dinosaur. That's
14:42
definitely a dinosaur if I've ever seen a dinosaur,
14:45
but I've also been told that I know nothing about
14:47
dinosaurs. Yeah, I mean, it's anywhere from a
14:50
dinosaur to a woolly mammoth. He's furry. Yeah.
14:54
That could be family like he needs a scratch.
14:57
Well, I've heard I've heard that about dinosaurs
15:00
They could have been feathered and I've actually
15:02
found the descriptions not great to like fully
15:05
give it a dinosaur But the pictures which will
15:07
likely be the cover for this episode Well, really
15:10
show dinosaurs and these were drawn. These are
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eyewitness accounts Yeah, so I would go with
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fur because he witnessed it But he could have
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been misinterpreting feathers at the same time
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that guy had a full deer in his mouth Oh, he's
15:22
massive. So this is the story The station of
15:25
McQuestion, that far -off corner of the strange
15:27
country of the Yukon where eight months of winter
15:29
are terrible but the short summer so marvelously
15:32
beautiful was on four occasions my chosen retreat
15:34
during the eight years that I have known northern
15:36
life. Returning one day to McQuestion in order
15:38
to purchase gold mining concessions. I had promised
15:41
to join in order that we should go hunting together.
15:43
I was starting a short walk along the banks of
15:45
the Stuart River one afternoon when I came upon
15:47
Tom Lemoore, who greeted me in the most cordial
15:49
manner. And I do have to say, if something doesn't
15:52
make sense with what I'm saying, there's a chance
15:54
that I couldn't read the actual words in there
15:57
and I just tried to piece together because, like
15:59
Chelsea saw it, this is from 1908 and it's scanned
16:02
to the internet. Fair enough. We must celebrate
16:05
your arrival, he said smiling as his whiskers
16:07
waved with the wind. The best way of doing that
16:09
is to hunt. At the junction of the two rivers
16:12
which have their names from Partridge Creek,
16:14
the miners call it Gulch. They each suddenly
16:16
became silent as though struck by entrapment.
16:19
We descended to the gorge and one of the males
16:21
given vent to the strangest cry imaginable, which
16:24
resembled nothing so much as a hollow barking
16:26
of some monstrous beast. What had happened here?
16:29
We decided to approach the spot where the animal
16:31
had taken fright so suddenly, arriving at the
16:33
moose lock. A spot about 60 feet long and 15
16:36
wide on a slope of marsh covered with thick crust
16:38
of snow. We saw the imprint of a monster body
16:41
and a footprint at least 10 feet long and 16
16:43
feet wide. We followed the track of the monster
16:45
in the valley for six or seven miles and then
16:47
at the ravine of Partridge Creek, a place which
16:49
fascinated us at the first glance by the fire
16:51
lit on our senses, we found an immense mass of
16:54
ice piled up in the narrow gorge while above
16:56
us stretched a great stretch of morass which
16:59
seemed like a frozen sea. The next day at five
17:02
o 'clock in the morning, Father Lavineau Butler
17:04
Lemore, a neighbor hunting guide, and myself
17:07
and five men of the tribe crossed the river to
17:09
steward in two canoes. Neither the first two
17:12
guides who were overcome with terror nor the
17:14
sergeant of the mountain police who received
17:16
our story with skepticism nor the letter carrier
17:18
who consented to accompany us. All day long we
17:20
searched without results and towards evening
17:22
tried out after having along the valley of the
17:25
little river McQuession and the country below
17:28
between Barlow and the lofty snow -covered mountains.
17:30
At last towards evening tired out after having
17:32
to bog in time through the great barrier of the
17:35
snow. Near the ravine, one of the guides and
17:37
everyone began preparing to eat a simple supper
17:39
brought from several houses wrapped in leaves.
17:42
The best of the food consisted of strange meat
17:43
which we broke into pieces and which might be
17:46
compared to the flesh of a mammoth animal of
17:48
ancient times. We are allowed to eat freely up
17:50
and it lasted for 10 minutes and I just love
17:52
that they're even at that time they really want
17:54
brave and willy mammoth. Suddenly right before
17:58
our eyes as if the thing had suddenly appeared
18:00
we saw a strange apparition. The monster it seemed
18:02
to rise out of the ground, its enormous body
18:04
towering above. It was covered with thick bristles
18:07
of a greyish -black. Its belly was plastered
18:09
with ice, its little eyes seemed to gleam like
18:12
fire, and its jaw moved slowly as though it was
18:14
chewing something. It made a hollow barking sound
18:16
and a hoarse, indescribable, frightful cry, and
18:19
wheeling around with surprising agility, it sprang
18:22
away, leaving strange scratching scraping noises
18:24
as it rushed into the ravine. That's the story
18:26
as I was able to make out from the article. With
18:29
those came the pictures as well. Like I said,
18:32
it doesn't quite describe a dinosaur, but man,
18:34
did he clearly draw a dinosaur. He definitely
18:37
clearly drew. He's also an artist, by the way.
18:40
It's definitely not what I would have drawn.
18:42
There's also parts I couldn't quite read, so
18:45
there might have been more in there about it.
18:47
Unfortunately, it's just like, it's really old.
18:49
I do love, did they not have references of dinosaurs
18:53
at that time? Is this where us? got our information
18:58
about that was atrocious English. I'm very sorry
19:01
about that. Is that where we as millennials got
19:05
our dinosaur information from? Couldn't have
19:07
been, no. Cause he seems to have no idea. He
19:09
was like a monster, but I don't know. I would
19:11
probably do the same thing, but I'd also maybe
19:14
be like, does that seem like a dinosaur to you
19:16
guys? Either way, I'd want to get out of there.
19:18
I wouldn't be happy to be seeing a dinosaur or
19:21
a monster. Oh, you know what? I can actually
19:23
read a bit of this better. So maybe I'll just
19:25
do this. for which we had been looking. A black,
19:28
gigantic form, the corners of his mouth filled
19:30
with blood -stained slime, his jaw munching something,
19:35
I know not what, was slowly and heavily climbing
19:38
the opposite side of the ravine, making the large
19:40
boulders roll into the valley as he went. Struck
19:43
with terror, Father Lavineau, Lemore, and myself
19:46
tried to utter a cry of fright, but no sound
19:48
issued from our parched throats. Unconsciously,
19:51
we have seized each other's arms. The five Indians
19:53
were crouching down with their faces against
19:55
the ground, trembling like leaves shaken by wind.
19:58
Butler was already rushing down the hill. The
20:00
dinosaur! It is the dinosaur of the Arctic Circle!
20:03
muttered Father Lavineau with chattering teeth.
20:05
The monster had stopped scarcely twenty paces
20:08
from us and resting upon his huge belly was staring
20:11
motionless at the red sun which was bathing all
20:14
the landscape in a weird light. For a full ten
20:17
minutes riveted to the spot by some strange force
20:20
which we could not overcome did we contemplate
20:22
his terrible apparition. We were however in full
20:25
possession of all our senses. There was not and
20:27
never will be in our minds the least doubt as
20:30
to the reality of what we saw. It was indeed
20:32
a living creature and not an illusion which we
20:34
had before us. The dinosaur then turned its immense
20:37
neck but did not seem to see us. His withers
20:39
were at least 18 feet above the ground. His entire
20:43
body from the extremity of its yawning jaws which
20:45
were surrounded by horns like that of a rhinoceros
20:48
to the end of the tail must have measured at
20:50
least 50 feet. His hide was like that of a wild
20:53
boar garnished with thick bristles in colour
20:55
a greyish -black. His belly was plastered with
20:58
thick mud. At this moment, Butler returned to
21:00
us. He told us that he thought the animal weighed
21:02
about 30 tons. Suddenly the dinosaur moved his
21:05
jaws, visibly chewing some thick, viscid kind
21:08
of food and we heard a sound like that of the
21:11
crunching of small bones. Then, with a sudden
21:13
movement, he raised himself on his hind legs
21:15
and giving utterance to a roar. A hollow, indescribable,
21:19
frightful sound and wheeling around with surprising
21:22
agility with movements resembling those of a
21:24
kangaroo. He sprang with a prodigious bound into
21:27
the ravine. On the 24th, Butler and myself, having
21:30
taken two days' rest, started for Dawson City
21:33
for the purpose of demanding from the government
21:36
50 armed men and mule -ers. Here my story ends.
21:39
For a month we were the laughing stock of the
21:42
Golden City and the Dawson Daily Nugget published
21:45
an article about me which was at the sometime
21:48
flattering and satirical entitled, Arrival of...
21:51
I can't read that. That's the end of the article
21:53
though. Okay, so there was a bit better description
21:55
than I thought. Yeah, that was a pretty good
21:57
description. So they, in Dawson City, they had
22:01
no idea about the dinosaur. No, apparently he
22:04
was like the first person to see it. It seemed
22:06
like a fairly gigantic dinosaur. Yeah, to go
22:10
kind of unnoticed for so long, which like we've
22:13
said, gives credence to the ghost idea. It really
22:17
does. And it's so unpopulated. So a ghost of
22:21
that size could go undetected. for a long time
22:25
and this was 1885 right 1908 he was born in um
22:30
1858 i think okay okay yeah i rule dinosaur ghost
22:35
Probably. It has to be. You know what, you might
22:38
have been right. I can't quite remember the actual
22:40
time it happened. The article was published in
22:42
1908, but he moved back to Europe for a while
22:46
there, so maybe it happened before then. Oh no,
22:48
you know what, sorry. The letter is titled January
22:49
1st, 1908, so it had to happen before 1908. Dupuis
22:53
made several trips from Paris to Yukon and Alaska
22:55
in the decades following his prospecting days
22:57
on one such foray, which he undertook as correspondence
22:59
for La Hado. He traveled to Nome, Alaska to report
23:03
on the conditions of a Bering Strait sea ice.
23:04
so he was actually asked to do some like important
23:07
things. Over which some quixotic and industrialists
23:10
hoped to build a highway. The most difficult
23:12
stretch of a hypothetical thoroughfare connecting
23:15
New York with Moscow. Just before twilight, he
23:17
reported, some two miles or less distant, we
23:19
could see the little blue waves out there in
23:21
Bering Sea. Not once did it freeze more than
23:24
five miles out at Nome. But there are periods
23:26
when the strait freezes. He reported back. In
23:28
1904, Jack London hired Dupuis to translate his
23:31
short story anthology, The Faith of Men and other
23:33
stories into French. in a letter to his friend
23:35
and publisher, George Platt Brett Sr. in which
23:37
he attempted to convince Brett that Dupuis was
23:39
the man for the job. Leonard wrote, Mr. George
23:42
Dupuis is a Frenchman, an artist, a journalist,
23:44
a man who knows Alaska better than I do. He has
23:46
lived the life. I called him an artist and by
23:49
the word I mean not painter, but temperament.
23:51
He sees from my talks with him. I see that he
23:54
has the romance, the fire, the color, the idiom
23:56
of the land. And you can hear that in his stories.
23:58
I gathered that much about the dinosaur description.
24:01
Yeah. Now the question becomes, was it a hoax?
24:04
Many who have commented upon the monster of Partridge
24:07
Geek believe that it was intended as a work of
24:09
fiction. In a 2017 article, A Brief History of
24:12
Cowboys and Dinosaurs, American comic book artist
24:15
Stephen Bessette described the story as, quote,
24:17
one slice of a great northern Yukon territory
24:20
fiction. Well, I'm convinced it's fiction, which
24:22
has become enshrined as the real thing by certain
24:24
cryptozoology circles, end quote. American cryptozoologist
24:28
Lauren Coleman echoed Bessette's statement in
24:31
May 27th, 2020. Twitter article referring to
24:33
the piece as pure crypto fiction set in Canada.
24:36
Regardless of whether or not the story itself
24:38
is true, the Monster Project Creek was clearly
24:41
presented as non -fiction though in the magazine
24:44
as an account of an actual sighting in the Yukon.
24:47
In the Strand magazine, it is sandwiched between
24:49
various non -fictional pieces such as 34 -year
24:52
-old Winston Churchill's account of his parliamentary
24:55
service in Uganda and a variety of obviously
24:58
fictional short stories like Supernatural Mystery
25:00
by Sir Arthur Conan. Doyle, involving an overworked
25:03
accountant and a haunted Scottish mirror. The
25:05
magazine's editor firmly placed Dupuy's story
25:07
in non -fiction with the headline, Story Strange
25:11
and True. Then, as if to dispel any remaining
25:14
doubt as to its veracity, he added a short preamble,
25:16
a direct translation of its French counterpart
25:18
in Justus II, in which he declared that the story's
25:21
author is well -known French writer and traveler
25:23
whose good faith is beyond question. Galvanized
25:25
by the sensational article, 29 -year -old Hugh
25:28
Grosvenor, the wealthy Duke of Westminster, affordably
25:31
planned a hunting trip to the Yukon territory
25:33
for the express purpose of begging the monster
25:35
of Partridge Creek. In preparation for his upcoming
25:38
adventure, the Duke allegedly chartered a German
25:40
schemer at Hamburg and fitted it with huge steel
25:42
cage in which the beast was to be contained.
25:45
His plans were ultimately foiled though in 1914
25:48
when the Great War broke out in the Old World
25:50
and by the time the war was over he just kind
25:52
of forgot about what this story was. As you do
25:55
at war, I guess. Yeah, I was just gonna say that
25:58
exact thing. And I'm kinda happy because, number
26:02
one, if he was real... He doesn't deserve to
26:04
be caged, yeah. Yeah, he doesn't. The second
26:06
thing is, you can't cage a ghost. We all know
26:09
you can't cage a ghost. We don't know it this
26:12
time. The Ghostbusters did show it was possible,
26:14
though. So did 13 Ghosts. I'm sure there's more
26:18
movies than that that cage ghosts. If we've just
26:21
thought of two. That would be crazy if we knew
26:24
the only two off the top of our heads. That's
26:27
true. I would say a little too crazy, so there's
26:30
gotta be more. Like Ghostbusters 2? Yeah. And
26:36
13 Ghosts 2. 14 Ghosts. If The Monster of Archer's
26:40
Creek indeed constitutes a piece of Northwest
26:41
fiction, it was not George Dupuy's first foray
26:44
into the genre. Two years earlier, he wrote a
26:46
French -language story entitled Un Dramme de
26:49
Klondike. for a drama in the Klondike, which
26:52
was published in the February 15th of 1906 issue
26:54
of Just Say Two. Same magazine. This story tells
26:57
of a French -Canadian prospector who murdered
26:59
two of his fellow countrymen in the subarctic
27:02
for their gold, only to be driven away from his
27:04
prize by his victims of sled dogs. I would read
27:06
that. Yeah. But where's the dinosaur? Now, its
27:10
context in literary history is not the only indication
27:13
that the monster part might be a fictional creation.
27:15
In the very first paragraph, Dupuis refers to
27:18
the Indians of the Stuart River as the members
27:19
of the Clayacook tribe. In the French language
27:22
version, he implies that the Clayacooks comprise
27:24
a band of snow Indians, and they perhaps are
27:27
a general denotation for the Dene. In fact, the
27:30
natives of the Stuart River country are members
27:32
of the northern Tochone First Nations, no bands
27:35
of which go by a name bearing resemblance to
27:37
the word Klayakuk. The Koyokuk Indians, on the
27:41
other hand, whose name the word Klayakuk strongly
27:44
evokes, are members of a subdivision of the Koyokun
27:46
Nation whose historical homeland lies in central
27:49
Alaska far from Stewart River. Dupuis' inclusion
27:52
of the Klayakuk Indians in his narrative, considering
27:54
his intimate familiarity with northern culture,
27:57
almost seems to be a subtle wink for whom such
27:59
an error unnoticed by the vast majority of readers
28:01
might seem glaringly obvious. Dupuis' friend
28:04
Jack London inserted a similar joke into his
28:07
novel The Call of the Wild with his inclusion
28:09
of the murderous and completely fictitious Yeehawt
28:11
Indians. For a long time the thing people would
28:14
point to that this couldn't have happened is
28:17
the fact that there were no Arctic dinosaurs
28:20
but starting not that long ago they realized
28:23
that there were in fact Arctic dinosaurs one
28:26
of the biggest being the Edmontosaurus which
28:28
Chelsea just a sidebar on this because we're
28:30
from Edmonton originally I've never heard it
28:32
I always thought it was the Edmontinosaurus I
28:35
was I'm just gonna say I've literally never heard
28:37
it pronounced the way you just... Yeah, me too.
28:41
It turns out it's called Edmontosaurus. I don't
28:43
know if this is a Mandela effect or we just were
28:46
idiots from Edmonton. I also think maybe we never
28:50
heard it pronounced. Potentially. Maybe we just
28:52
read it. And added that extra syllable. Once
28:55
your brain is fixed on something, you can't always
28:57
correct it. I'm going with Mandela effect just
29:00
because I don't want to admit I was wrong. And
29:02
again, I'm too old to be correcting myself at
29:05
this point. It's still going to be the Edmontinosaurus.
29:07
Actually, it was one of the most shocking, jarring
29:10
things I've seen in a documentary. Hearing Morgan
29:13
Freeman's voice say Edmontosaurus. Just like
29:16
matter of factly. I could see dropping everything
29:20
just hearing that one thing and being like, I'm
29:22
sorry, what did he just say? That is jarring.
29:25
I just heard you say it and I don't like it.
29:28
Sorry, what was it about the Edmontinosaurus?
29:31
What did you just say? I forgot everything. It's
29:34
one of the arctic dinosaurs. It is. Oh interesting.
29:37
I guess Edmonton is the arctic. Now in 1922,
29:40
newspapers across North America reported that
29:42
a family of carnivorous dinosaurs resembling
29:44
Ceratosauri, which is what they ended up calling
29:46
this one, had been spotted in the Soviet Union's
29:49
Kamchatka Peninsula. Indigenous hunters allegedly
29:52
discovered the mangled remains of a young Ceradesaurus
29:55
in Russia's boreal wilderness and brought one
29:57
of its severed feet, which was the size of a
29:59
man's head, back to civilization. Some journalists
30:02
who commented on the story suggested that these
30:03
alleged Russian dinosaurs might be the kin of
30:05
the monster of Partridge Creek, speculating that
30:08
such creatures might cross the Bering Strait
30:10
during especially severe winters, when Kamchatka
30:12
and Chukotko were linked to Alaska by an unbroken
30:16
string of ice. When a subsequent expedition in
30:18
search of the Russian dinosaurs proved fruitless,
30:20
Some suggest that the prehistoric remnants abode
30:23
within the Chersky Mountains, a range newly discovered
30:25
in northeastern Siberia between the Yana and
30:28
Indigirka rivers. And I do have to say, that's
30:31
one of those stories I could find no other reference
30:33
but in Harrison Peters' writing, so I do have
30:35
to take his word on that. Throughout the 1930s,
30:38
Canadian writers and former Hudson Bay Company
30:40
inspector Philip H. Godsell wrote a number of
30:42
articles in which he included a story that had
30:44
been told to him by his friend Frank Beaton.
30:47
The HBCs, which is the Hudson Bay Company's chief
30:49
factor at Fort St. John, British Columbia. Just
30:53
listen to how many different people this has
30:55
to go through, Chelsea. Okay. Beaton had heard
30:58
the story from a scientific party whose members
31:00
had heard it from one of their Indian guides,
31:03
a Cree named Chikina, who had in turn heard the
31:06
tale from his father. Sometime in the late 19th
31:09
century or early 20th century, Chikina's father
31:12
had purportedly traveled to the upper Liyard
31:15
River Country, in what is now Southeastern Yukon,
31:18
where he fell in with a primitive tribe of Dene
31:21
Indians. their fire, Godsell wrote. These Stone
31:25
Age people had told of a medicine valley to the
31:28
north inhabited by monsters of fearful size and
31:30
ferocity. One of the Kree's new Dene acquaintances
31:34
produced a scrap of butt skin from his medicine
31:36
bag, on which had been burned the image of one
31:40
of these monsters. The Kree treasured this charm
31:42
for years and eventually bequeathed it to his
31:45
son Chikina, who In turn, later showed it to
31:48
the scientific party he was tasked with guiding.
31:50
The scientist told an incredulous Beaton that
31:53
the figure depicted on the buckskin scrap was
31:55
a dinosaur drawn in flawless anatomical detail.
31:59
That's a lot of hands that story had to go through
32:01
to get to there. We've all played telephone.
32:04
That's a concerning amount of people. However,
32:07
doesn't discount a dinosaur ghost. Dinosaur ghosts
32:09
can make it through the chain, I've heard. Oh,
32:12
they should. Unharmed. If I hear Dinosaur Ghost
32:14
in telephone playing it, I'm not mishearing that.
32:18
In fact, I'm turning things into Dinosaur Ghost.
32:21
Which, never mind, that hurts my story. I take
32:23
that back. I was just going to say, oh no. The
32:29
world will likely never know Dupuis' actual opinion
32:33
of what might have been on the alleged ceratosaur
32:35
of Siberia, the story of Chikina's buckskin drawings,
32:38
and the controversy that his own tale engendered.
32:40
As I said earlier, I got the date wrong. He died
32:43
prematurely in 1911, three years after the actual
32:45
publication of his story, so no one really got
32:47
to ask him if it was true or not. Oh, okay. Well,
32:52
I would go with... Probably true. I mean, who's
32:55
going to say that ghosts can't exist up there?
32:57
And one more crazy thing about the Arctic. I
33:01
have to explain a little bit about fossils before
33:04
we get into this next part. So fossils may look
33:07
like bones, but they're not bones. Do you understand
33:10
that? Nope. Over the course of millions of years,
33:13
all of the things inside bones that make them
33:16
biomaterial seep out of the bone and it's replaced
33:19
with calcium. So what you're actually seeing
33:21
are rocks that have just kind of taken the place
33:24
of the bone. Okay, I could probably get behind
33:26
that. But that's what fossilization actually
33:28
is, is the rocks forming the bone shape. Well,
33:32
in 1967, Robert Liscum, a petroleum geologist
33:36
working for Shell Oil Company, discovered well
33:38
-preserved bones in Alaska along the Colville
33:41
River. As the bones were fresh, not permineralized,
33:45
which is fossilized, he assumed that they were
33:47
recently deposited. perhaps belonging to a mammoth
33:51
or a bison. 20 years later, scientists recognize
33:53
the bones as belonging to a duck -billed dinosaur
33:56
Edmontosaurus, or Edmontinosaurus as some of
33:59
us need to hear for assurances. Now I know what
34:02
you're talking about. Other bones found in the
34:05
deposit belong to horned dinosaurs and various
34:07
carnivorous dinosaurs. An article on Liscombe's
34:11
bones states, these bones are stained a dark
34:13
red -brown but otherwise display little permineralization,
34:18
crushing or distortion. So they're not fossils,
34:21
they're actually finding bones. Which generally
34:24
would mean they're fresher bones. Like he was
34:27
saying, he thought they were woolly mammoth bones
34:29
when he found them because they couldn't be millions
34:31
of years old because they were actually bones.
34:33
Wasn't this from the 60s? Was the woolly mammoths
34:36
going stink? They went to stink about the same
34:38
time as the pyramids were built, so like 6 ,000
34:41
years ago? So why did he think it was a woolly
34:44
mammoth? Because they don't fossilize that fast.
34:46
Well, just just woolly mammoths? No, it takes
34:49
like millions of years to fossilize, so something
34:51
10 ,000 years old couldn't be fossilized. Okay,
34:54
in my head I wouldn't be able to like make those
34:57
fit together. Okay. Because, again, mammoths
35:00
are dinosaurs, so you're trying to find the distinction.
35:04
Yep. And second thing, Edmontinosaurus was a
35:08
duckbill. I thought it was like Tyrannosaurus
35:11
Rex. No, you're thinking Albertosaurus. Oh. Eblontosaurus
35:17
is a very large duckbill dinosaur that's a herbivore.
35:20
You're so up on your dinosaur. I know too much
35:23
about dinosaurs right now. This is impressive.
35:25
Okay. I also know one of the smallest and longest
35:29
-named dinosaurs as Micropachycephalosaurus.
35:32
Yep, I did not know that and I will be explaining
35:35
that too. Then why did you say yeah? Just because
35:37
that was long and I was confirming that it was
35:41
long. Okay, so back to where we are. Other researchers
35:46
have found similar frozen dinosaur bones. For
35:48
example, in 1987 while working with scientists
35:50
from Memorial University on Violet Island, just
35:53
east of the northern tip of Baffin Island, a
35:55
young Canadian Eskimo picked up such a bone fragment.
35:59
It was identified within days as part of the
36:01
lower jaw of the duck -billed dinosaur Edmontosaurus.
36:04
In 2015, an article was published entitled, A
36:07
New Arctic Hadrosaurid—oh sorry, it wasn't. It
36:09
was a duck -billed—the duck -billed dinosaur
36:11
is not Edmontosaurus. It's Hadrosaurid. from
36:13
Prince Creek Formation. It states, the hadrosaurid
36:16
remains are almost entirely disarticulated, show
36:18
little evidence of weathering, predation, or
36:21
trampling, and are typically uncrushed and unpermineralized.
36:25
Morrie was challenged on the assertion by other
36:26
mainstream paleontologists who claimed the bones
36:28
were permineralized, but I just find it crazy
36:31
that they're finding those bones up there and
36:32
like there is a chance that that could mean that
36:35
there's dinosaurs that lived a lot longer up
36:37
there. But scientists really don't think that,
36:39
unfortunately. They just say, well, freezing
36:41
biological material like collagen obviously inhibits
36:44
decay and helps preserve structures. There are
36:46
limits to how long it can be preserved. Is it
36:48
reasonable to expect frozen bones to remain in
36:50
this pristine condition for 60 million years?
36:52
Their answer is because it's a process like a
36:55
chemical or a physical process because it's a
36:57
cold climate. It just goes so much slower that
37:00
you can still get bones up there. Yeah, I could
37:02
see that. And so, yeah. we don't know for sure
37:05
there's a chance they just lived a lot longer
37:07
up there and hey maybe they still live up there
37:09
or their ghosts are still there maybe they just
37:11
died out in the 1800s and they became victorian
37:13
style ghosts we don't know that that opens a
37:16
whole other big worms so does the story go on
37:19
to you know this guy picked up a fresh oh no
37:23
i forgot the dinosaur Edmontosaurus jaw and he
37:28
disturbed its remains and then he saw the ghost
37:32
i wish no it If they'd found that before the
37:36
Partridge Creek monster, then I would have said,
37:38
like, that's fully him. This makes perfect sense,
37:41
but no. Yeah. No, that would have been after
37:44
actually, now that I'm thinking of the timeline.
37:46
Who's to say, because this guy was just doing
37:50
work, right? He's probably not living there,
37:52
so it's not to say that this dinosaur is not
37:55
currently... Haunting the area. Well, and that's
37:58
the whole thing. We don't know how heavily dinosaur
38:02
haunted the Arctic is because there's less people
38:05
there It just is I bet you like they were on
38:07
Baffin Island. I think three people live on Baffin
38:10
Island. This is very sparsely It's the part of
38:13
Canada that looks like a chicken. There's probably
38:16
Yeah, have you ever noticed that? Pull up a map
38:18
of Canada right now. Look at the top of it It
38:20
looks like a chicken. I was just about to say
38:22
I don't have a map, but I could just Google it
38:24
very easily I would like to think that the Arctic
38:29
is probably more populated by dinosaur ghosts
38:32
than actual people. There's a not zero percent
38:36
chance of that. That's my theory I'm putting
38:38
out. Okay, the part that looks like a chicken.
38:41
Yeah, right at the top. I don't see it. You don't
38:44
see? Okay, well we might have to have that picture
38:47
in there as well, but Canada looks like a chicken.
38:50
That's Baffin Island. Okay. Anyhow, that's all
38:52
I got Chelsea. I have imparted you guys too much
38:56
dinosaur facts that you don't need that will
38:58
be forgotten. If you remember anything, just
39:02
remember, the North is teeming with dinosaur
39:06
ghosts that nobody wants to talk about except
39:08
us. And you think they'd want to talk about that?
39:10
This is a good topic. If you were to see any
39:13
type of ghost, what kind of ghost would you want
39:14
to see? Dinosaur ghost? I can't think of a non
39:18
-terrifying ghost to see. I know. Dinosaur ghost
39:21
seems pretty terrifying. I feel like a dinosaur
39:24
ghost would be the worst possible ghost that
39:27
you could see. I don't know! I feel... Yeah.
39:29
People ghost seems pretty bad too, because we
39:31
know what people can do. It's true, it might
39:34
be worse than what dinosaurs can do. The dinosaurs
39:38
just need to fuel their bodies. But like half
39:41
of the dinosaurs are herbivores, so they'll just
39:43
leave you alone for the most part. Okay, I think
39:45
I just settled it. I think I'd rather see a dinosaur
39:48
ghost. I want to see an Edmontinosaurus. I wouldn't
39:52
go that far. I'd want to see, like, the little
39:54
one that you said the long name of. Micropachycephalosaurus?
39:58
Yep, that's the guy. Okay. I wonder what he looks
40:01
like. Well, with that, you guys pick your dinosaur
40:04
ghost you want to see. In the meantime, I have
40:06
been Taylor, here with Chelsea. We are Journey
40:08
to the Fringe. Thank you all for listening. We'll
40:10
see you next week. Bye. Thank you for listening
40:15
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40:50
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