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To: Soliton

I'm surprised nobody looked into the validity of Mr. McDonald as a private investigator/forensic artist. A quick google turns up:

http://www.alienufoart.com/

Mr. McDonald is much more than a private investigator or a forensic artist. He's someone who makes a living off of the publicity generated by things like this. Put it together with the lochnesstooth.com domain being privately registered so nobody can see whose name is on the account, and all of a sudden, pictures or not, it smells a lot more like a hoax.



170 posted on 04/19/2005 3:25:04 PM PDT by habeebtc
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To: habeebtc

Sorry if any/all of this has been said before, I've not read every post. I've been looking into this for a few days, and this is what I've said about it elsewhere:

I know Loch Ness extremely well. I've spent many nights camping by its shores, and many days on its surface on boats. A company I used to work for owns boats on the Loch, and I spent loads of time on those too. I'm not a monster hunter, I'm a local.

Looking at their first photograph, going by the position of the shadows they are looking in a generally southern direction (we're in the northern hemisphere, and the shadows come towards the camera). Since the loch bank is on the left, they must therefore be on the east side of the loch. The only places where there would be a bit of land sticking out into the loch like that, along that bank, are at Foyers Bay or in Loch Dochfour (in the bit of water that's to the north and is not really part of Loch Ness). Neither of them look like that, and neither of them would have a view with large mountains in the background - just miles and miles of loch stretching into the distance. In fact, no view down the loch would have mountains like that in the background - as you're looking down the biggest glen (valley) in the UK.

Given that :
- the people who "found" this "tooth" are American
- their "tooth" is most likely to be an antler from a young pronghorn antelope
- the pronghorn antelope is species of deer that's only found in the western USA, northern Mexico and south western Canada
- their photograph of the Loch almost certainly isn't Loch Ness
- their story contains many problems - notably "no bears in the area", the stuff with the water bailiffs and references to "the Highland Authorities"
- their expert is a screaming woo-woo of the worst kind (http://www.alienufoart.com/)

I suggest that not only is the whole thing a poor hoax, but also that they never actually were at Loch Ness in the first place. I think they probably found this deer, possibly the loser in a fight with another deer, on a fishing trip in south west Canada or north west USA and decided to pretend it's a tooth from the Loch Ness monster.

Sadly, only the first photograph shows enough of the area for a useful analysis to be done. I'm 90% sure that's not Loch Ness - meaning that the others aren't likely to be either. After all, if they really did visit Loch Ness, and the photos with the deer really were taken there, then why would they risk damaging their credibility by falsely claiming another photograph shows a view of the Loch? The quote I posted doesn't really go into what led me to believe it's an antler from a proghorn antelope - that's the result of discussing it with people who are extremely familiar with the species, including removing the antlers from freshly hunted animals.


171 posted on 04/21/2005 6:10:26 AM PDT by Lianachan
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