Gambo, the Gambian sea creature
On 12 June 1983, Owen Burnham and three relatives came across the carcass of a large sea creature at Bungalow Beach on The Gambia's coast. Cryptozoologist Karl Shuker and others recorded his account.
Karl Shuker writes that on 12 June 1983 Owen Burnham, a wildlife enthusiast, and three relatives found a huge sea creature's carcass washed up on a Gambian beach called Bungalow Beach. Shuker describes it as largely intact and outwardly undecayed, which he calls exceptional for such remains.
Futility Closet gives Burnham's age as fifteen. He says the animal was roughly 15 feet in length, with a head of 4.5 feet and a beak holding 80 conical teeth. Wikipedia adds that the body's only visible damage was to its hind flippers, and that two fishermen were already dismembering it to sell its head to a tourist. Wikipedia says the fishermen took it for a dolphin, and that removing the head reportedly took about twenty minutes because the vertebra was so thick. According to Futility Closet, a tourist bought the head, and the body went into the ground.
"The only sign of damage on the body was its right and left hind flippers, which were torn at the terminal and almost completely torn off respectively.[1][4][5][6] Upon discovery, the carcass was being readily dismembered and mutilated by two fishermen who intended to sell its head to a tourist. The decapitation reportedly took about twenty minutes due to the thickness of the animal's vertebra.[1] The fishermen recognised the animal as a dolphin."
- Gambo, the Gambian sea serpent - or, how a very mysterious stranger on the shore launched my cryptozoological career, Karl Shuker (2013, author blog)
- Gambo, Futility Closet (2006)