Just What Exactly Is This Strange Gobi Pond Creature?

Calling all cryptozoologists!

I stumbled across this juicy little tidbit quite by accident the other evening via an interesting and new-to-me blog called bizarre creatures which had a December 2007 post called gobi desert creature which led to another interesting blog called Dreaming Of Danzan Ravjaa. The tagline reads: “An American Buddhist Monk in and out of Mongolia: Religion, Culture, History and Birdlife.” In a post from September 2007, we read:

I need a day or two to edit several hundred photographs, recall and refine details, and just process. But rest assured, I’ll share as much as I can this week, undoubtedly over several posts.

But in the meantime, what in the hell are these?

On the first day’s drive, we happened upon a pea-green, brackish pond, along the edges of which hundreds of these bizarre creatures were scuttling about and fighting whenever they encountered each other. I recalled at once the horseshoe crabs I used to find in childhood visits to Long Island, tales of the Mongolian Death Worm, and the hideous tracking robot that burrowed into Neo’s bellybutton in The Matrix. They’re about three inches long, and about 300 million years out of place. Please forward to friends who may be zoologists; I have no idea where to even begin researching what these are and how they came to be in a small pond smack in the middle of the Gobi Desert. I just stood there watching them, my face locked somewhere between a scowl and a gawp, contemplating karma until summoned back into the car.

Neither blog has heard one single peep from anyone since they posted in 2007.

That’s terrible… can we do better?

peace