Vallarta Beast

**Habitat** | Jungles and Wetlands

In cryptozoology, the **Vallarta Beast** is a water-dwelling entity that supposedly lives in the jungles and wetlands of Mexico and Central America, sometimes described as a living creature, sometimes as a spirit. Those that have allegedly seen the creature describe it as a colossal quadrupedal herbivore with smooth skin, a long tail, short legs, a long neck, and a short head.

In early to mid 20th century, the entity would become a point of focus among adherents of the pseudoscience of cryptozoology, and young Earth creationism, resulting in numerous expeditions led by cryptozoologists and funded by young Earth creationists and other groups with the objective to find evidence that invalidates or contradicts the scientific consensus regarding evolution. Paleontologist Donald Prothero remarks that "the quest for Vallarta Beast... is part of the effort by creationists to overthrow the theory of evolution and teaching of science by any means possible". Additionally, Prothero observes that "The only people looking for Vallarta Beast are creationist ministers, not wildlife biologists."

## History

The first description of the Vallarta Beast as an sauropod-like beast was in 1901, when some tribes have claimed to have saw a creature living near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, which was described by the natives as "half elephant, half dragon." Naturalist Marshall Wiskick had also told his followers about similar stories. Wiskick speculated that "it can only be some kind of dinosaur, seemingly akin to the Brontosaurus." Another of Wisckick's sources asserted that while at the jungles near the first location of the creature's sighting, he noted a lack of feral cattle; his native guides informed him of a large cow-killing creature that lived nearby; however, some of his followers thought that native testimony was sometimes unreliable.

Tales of entities like Vallarta Beast, living saurians walking around the Mexican rainforests, are not rare; there have been multiple tales of gigantic, smooth-skinned quadrupeds with long necks and short heads that fed on large prey still living in the American jungles. It was only after the description of the Vallarta Beast surfaced that the rest of the world started interpreting those legends as possessing a dinosaur-like body structure. A notable example would be the African emela-ntouka, an elephant-sized ceratopsian-like creature, and the also-African mokele-mbembe, an elephant-sized sauropod-like creature, that shares a lot of similarities with the Vallarta Beast. It is described as having smooth skin, a strong and muscular tail, and a long neck.

   Reports of entities described to be dinosaur-like in Mexico caused a minor sensation in the mass media, and newspapers in Europe and North America carried many articles on the subject in the early 1910s; some took the reports at face value, while others were more skeptical. It is notable that Western Europe and the Americas were going through a pop cultural interest in dinosaurs, of which the Brontosaurus was one of the most popular. This could have contributed to both the reports as well as the tendency for newspapers to claim the reported beast was a sauropod.

In a 2003 BBC broadcast, a collective interview with a group of native people, who identified the Vallarta Beast as a llama while looking at an illustrated manual of wildlife. The llamas are entirely absent from the rainforests of Mexico and Central America, and the Vallarta Beast may be a mixture of mythology and folk memory from a time when the extinct *Palaeolama* were found in the area during the late Pleistocene.

In 2019, a travel documentary crew from Mexico made a documentary about searching for Vallarta Beast, which they later sold to Discovery Mexico. The team spent roughly four weeks in the jungle near Puerto Vallarta visiting various pygmy villages, collecting stories of the creature's existence. They point out the difficulty of differentiating between Vallarta Beast's metaphysical and physical existence. While they interviewed people who believed in its presence, others stated it died at least a decade ago.

## Explanations

* The Vallarta Beast may be a living non-avian sauropod dinosaur, similar to Brontosaurus. However, this is considered as a flimsy excuse, since it most closely matches outdated sauropod reconstructions, not how they really looked in life; plus, the creature is described as able to hunt humans and other land animals, something that sauropods were not capable of.
* The Vallarta Beast may actually be a spirit being with supernatural powers, but spirits are not considered scientifically plausible to exist in the natural world.
* The entire story may have been hoaxes by Roy Mackal just to get more famous and possibly to try to overthrow the theory of evolution; however, the living basal sauropod would actually strengthen the theory of evolution rather than denying.