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Description
In 1983, 15-year-old Owen Burnham and his family came across an animal carcass washed up on Bungalow Beach in The Gambia. When he reported the sighting three years later, Burnham described it as a smooth-skinned animal with 80 pointed teeth, four flippers (one of which was badly damaged, perhaps from an attack), and a long tapering tail. Locals were in the process of decapitating it to sell the head to a tourist, and the body was buried on the beach; recent attempts to find it have been unsuccessful.

Researchers have suggested that Gambo was a surviving marine reptile, likely a pliosaur. This is unlikely since pliosaur have been absent from the fossil record since the Mid-Cretaceous. Others have suggested it could be an unknown species of whale, or a freak individual with rear flippers and no flukes; whales and dolphins have been documented with these conditions, though not together. However, I don’t think we even need to be that extreme.

In other cases of supposed sea monster carcasses being found, photographs and witness descriptions were often extremely different. The Santa Cruz Monster of 1925 was described as having feathers and stumpy legs; photos show it was a beaked whale. The Hendaye Carcass of 1951 was sketched by a witness as a rough-skinned animal looking like a horned plesiosaur; photos show a lump of flesh that was identified as a rotting basking shark. Most famously, South Africa’s Trunko from 1924 was said to have white fur, an elephantine trunk, flippers, and a tail like a lobster. When photos of it were discovered in 2014, they revealed it was simply a shapeless white blob, likely decaying whale blubber. Clearly, witness descriptions of carcasses can’t be taken at face value.

Considering that both the locals and other members of his family are on record calling Gambo a dolphin, my guess is that Burnham saw a mangled dolphin or beaked whale, which morphed into a sea monster in his memory over time.

Description
In 1983, 15-year-old Owen Burnham and his family came across an animal carcass washed up on Bungalow Beach in The Gambia. When he reported the sighting three years later, Burnham described it as a smooth-skinned animal with 80 pointed teeth, four flippers (one of which was badly damaged, perhaps from an attack), and a long tapering tail. Locals were in the process of decapitating it to sell the head to a tourist, and the body was buried on the beach; recent attempts to find it have been unsuccessful.

Researchers have suggested that Gambo was a surviving marine reptile, likely a pliosaur. This is unlikely since pliosaur have been absent from the fossil record since the Mid-Cretaceous. Others have suggested it could be an unknown species of whale, or a freak individual with rear flippers and no flukes; whales and dolphins have been documented with these conditions, though not together. However, I don’t think we even need to be that extreme.

In other cases of supposed sea monster carcasses being found, photographs and witness descriptions were often extremely different. The Santa Cruz Monster of 1925 was described as having feathers and stumpy legs; photos show it was a beaked whale. The Hendaye Carcass of 1951 was sketched by a witness as a rough-skinned animal looking like a horned plesiosaur; photos show a lump of flesh that was identified as a rotting basking shark. Most famously, South Africa’s Trunko from 1924 was said to have white fur, an elephantine trunk, flippers, and a tail like a lobster. When photos of it were discovered in 2014, they revealed it was simply a shapeless white blob, likely decaying whale blubber. Clearly, witness descriptions of carcasses can’t be taken at face value.

Considering that both the locals and other members of his family are on record calling Gambo a dolphin, my guess is that Burnham saw a mangled dolphin or beaked whale, which morphed into a sea monster in his memory over time.