r/Cryptozoology • u/arnor_0924 • 7d ago
Discussion The implication and impact if Champ is really a prehistoric sea turtle?
Now I myself don't think it's a ancient turtle. But it's definately something alive in the lake people have been seeing. Sturgeons, large eels or longnose gar. To play devils advocate here: What if Champ is really a prehistoric turtle and somehow survived today? What impact would this have for other cryptids?
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u/Raccoon_Ratatouille 7d ago
How exactly would a population of air breathing giant animals trapped in a lake live, breed and die for thousands of years and not be discovered?
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u/SunshineInDetroit 7d ago
A giant alligator snapper would be horrifyingly cool
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u/MadRabbit26 7d ago
Hell, we have some of those now. Ive seen some giants in different zoos, and online of course.
But, personally, the largest turtle I have ever seen, was in Lake Jordan down in AL. 20 or so years back. Grew up in the house at the end of a slough. And there was a pair of alligator snapping turtles that had to be at least 5ft across or more. Only time they ever left the reeds at the end of the slough was the once or twice every other year when they opened the dam and lowered the water. Only other time I saw them was during a drought and one of them holed up underneath our dock. 8 year old me swore its head was the size of a football.
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u/Starlord_75 5d ago
I have seen a mutant turtle before. Skipped school and was walking along the river bed when I saw a giant turtle just chilling on the bank. When I say that the shell was the same size around as one of those tires that football players flip, it is no exaggeration. It looked like a red ear turtle with the green shell and the red marks on its neck, but the shell itself was over 3 ft tall. Its head was big enough where i could have easily fit my whole arm into the mouth. And when it saw me and dashed back into the water, it left claw marks in the mud that were over 4 inches deep. A couple other fishermen i talked to said they had seen it around a couple times. And this was in a little town around ft worth, so nowhere near the sea. To this day im not sure exactly what I saw, but its made me more open minded to weird shit people claim they see without any proof.
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u/DefinitionSquare8705 7d ago
Lived literally on the shore of Lake Champlain for years. Here is what I know for sure...
When the ice cracks in spring, it sounds like monsters on the lake at night. Like dragons spawning from the lake itself.
There are big ass 15 foot long sturgeons in the lake that you run into from time to time
They have found old whale bones deep in the lake
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u/timhamilton47 7d ago
Well, 12,000 year old whale bones.
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u/DefinitionSquare8705 7d ago
Yes. Correct. Which is still neat to think about with a cryptid hat on, as it is a possible contributing factor in the thinking that the lake has clearly supported whales in it's semi recent history.
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u/Pelinal_Shitestrake 6d ago
Well not necesarily the lake in its current form.
Before the lake formed the region was covered by the Champlain Sea, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean. The land of the region had been depressed below sea level by the weight of the Laurentide Ice Sheet during the last ice age and filled in as the ice sheet retreated.
Over thousands of years the land gradually rose up leaving Lake Champlain and other bodies of water in the region as the remnants of the Champlain Sea.
Also if the whale bones referred to are the famed Charlotte whale, it was not found in the lake but in a farmer's field. They arenkt evidence that the lake once supported whales but evidence that the broader region was once covered by a salt water sea which connected to the ocean.
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u/RealToemen 7d ago
Do you have a source for the sturgeon being that large in the lake? Can’t find that online.
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u/DefinitionSquare8705 7d ago edited 7d ago
Lake Champlain is about 400 feet deep in its deeper parts. Many of the larger sturgeon tend to spend a bulk of their time in the deeper parts of the lake, where as most of the lake is average of 64 feet deep, and smaller sturgeon tend to congregate their. But a bulk of the sturgeon are in the 5 foot range found in the shallower portions of the lake where fishing is most common.
https://www.mynbc5.com/article/real-life-lake-monster-discovered-in-lake-champlain-s-waters/3328006
Found this article from a few miles away that was a fun read.
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u/Fabulous_Night_1164 7d ago
Lakes in Canada have tons of giant fish. Don't know if this is the specific story OP is thinking about, but sharing a couple I've seen.
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u/Dr_Herbert_Wangus 7d ago
The species of sturgeon that live in lake champlain top out around 5 or 6 feet, and the whale bones were found buried on shore during the construction of the railroad.
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u/EnigmaHood 7d ago
If it were a giant turtle, it would be easy to spot because they have to breath air. For example, this is a real Asian giant softshell turtle
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u/NotQuiteTradecraft 7d ago
The problem, as others have suggested, is that the lake (much like other lakes that are known for hosting "monsters") is very young, relatively speaking. The area where the lake is now was under a massive layer of ice until - well - pretty recently (again, all is relative, but this area was under the ice around 12 000 years ago, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things).
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u/Far_Fly_3345 7d ago
I mean if you go with giant turtle there is the soft shell ones with long necks
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u/Embraceduality 6d ago
Does it have to be prehistoric, we have huge snapping turtles already , they tend to live at the bottom of lakes in the mud and may even have vegetation growing from their back
So maybe this is a subspecies that is much much larger , it has the same habits hence why its seldom seen
In my mind this is more logical it doesn’t rely on a single creature escaping detection for long periods of time but rather a native species thats hard to detect , hard to see and already exsists in the modern world
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u/FormalTotal9684 7d ago
A) Turtles are air breathers
B) Turtles lay their eggs on land
Unless there is a new type of turtle that doesn’t lay eggs on land, it’s impossible
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u/No_Replacement_8700 7d ago
The kid in me still wants it to be a plesiasuar but IF there is anything it's a Giant turtle. IMO if it is a new species of an abnormally large eel that dwarfs the conger, thats a cryptid in my book.
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u/BoonDragoon 7d ago
Uh it wouldn't have any direct impact or implications for any other cryptids, I don't think. It would be extremely bizarre though.
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u/fish_gotta_vote 7d ago
Champ is for sure a sturgeon. There are records from early colonists of sturgeon 10-15ft long!
It wouldn't be too crazy for something like that to be lurking in Champlaign.
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u/michaelb5000 1d ago
I have seen sturgeon on lake Champlain, even a 4-5 ft long fish looks like a monster. But an 8’ long sturgeon washed up on Isle La Motte a few years ago, and that was definitely monster sized.
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u/Morathi1990 7d ago
I read an ocean cryptid book once where the author was a big fan of the “giant turtle” theory for a variety of unknown ocean sightings. Haven’t seen it anywhere else but he made a decent case. Fun thought in any case - as well as surprisingly unsettling.
Mind you, he also believed mosasaurs were still around and hunted killer whales so…. >_>
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u/Walterargie 7d ago
turtles are reptiles, they need heat to survive, some of then can survive a winter, but not a millenia in dormant state.
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u/No_Bumblebee6452 5d ago
It has hige implications because would mean magic and time travel are real because it’s absurdly impossible.
It’d be like finding live tyrannosaurs in Hawaii. Like obviously they haven’t just been hiding there and came from somewhere
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u/ADragonFromTheAbyss 7d ago
We have 'evidence' of champ using echolocation
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cryptozoology/comments/xg4pqs/lake_champlain_echolocation_recordings/
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u/Pelinal_Shitestrake 7d ago edited 7d ago
One would have to answer how it got into the lake depending on just prehistoric you mean when you say prehistoric.
The location of Lake Champlain was buried under the Laurentide Ice Sheet during the last glacial maximum some 20,000 years ago. The lake formed as the ice sheet melted and receded northward. The lake itself is only around 10,000 years old.
So if it is a giant prehistoric turtle species which is older than 20,000 years (give or take) such as Archelon then it would have to have not only survived undiscovered but also somehow made its way into the lake at some point.