The editorial constraints of this assessment require me to note, at the outset, that these two subjects occupy almost entirely different ontological positions. The U28 creature was observed once, under conditions of active naval warfare, for an estimated eight to ten seconds, before descending back into the North Atlantic. The Thylacine was observed continuously for decades, hunted to government-certified extinction, and has since been observed again — intermittently, contested, and inconveniently — across Tasmania, mainland Australia, and several regions of the Australian interior. One subject has a single data point. The other has a century of them.
That both appear in this document as comparable subjects is a function of WTC’s mandate, which I support. What the comparison reveals is not, I think, what the competitive framing intends to reveal. The U28 creature may be the more dramatic entity. The Thylacine may be the more consequential one. These are not the same thing, and the scoring system will struggle with the difference.
What the data does not capture is that the U28 creature may represent something more genuinely unknown. The Thylacine, for all the uncertainty around its current status, is a described species with museum specimens and a genome. The U28 creature is a sixty-foot winged crocodilian seen once from a sinking ship, and we know essentially nothing else about it. The Thylacine is the better-documented, more pursuable, more institutionally acknowledged subject. The U28 creature is the one that keeps me, professionally speaking, awake.
