Byron's "beasts" on the Strait of Magellan

John Byron, who had been a castaway on Wager Island in Chilean Patagonia, later in 1741, later, as a commodore, led a British naval squadron in 1764 and sailed around the globe. During his voyage, they stopped in the Strait of Magellan, at the site of Port Famine, a failed Spanish settlement, close to what is now Punta Arenas in Chile. There his crew encountered some strange beasts during their stay (Dec. 27, 1764 to Jan. 4, 1765). Below is what Byron wrote.

Source: John Hawkesworth's Account of the Voyages'in the Southern Hemisphere' (Online) and also Online here

" I had set up a small tent at the bottom of this bay, close to a little rivulet, and just at the skirts of a wood, soon after the ship came to an anchor, where three men were employed in washing: they slept on shore; but soon after sunset were awakened out of their first sleep by the roaring of some wild beasts, which the darkness of the night, and the solitariness of their situation in this pathless desart, rendered horrid beyond imagination: the tone was hollow and deep, so that the beasts, of whatever kind, were certainly large, and the poor fellows perceived that they drew nearer and nearer, as the sound every minute became more loud. From this time sleep was renounced for the night, a large fire was immediately kindled, and a constant blaze kept up: this prevented the beasts from invading the tent; but they continued to prowl round it at a little distance, with incessant howlings, till the day broke, and then, to the great comfort of the affrighted sailors, they disappeared. At this place, not far from where the ship lay, there is a hill that has been cleared of wood, and we supposed this to be the spot where the Spaniards formerly had a settlement*. One of the men, as he was passing over this hill, perceived that, in a particular part, the ground returned the sound of his foot, as if it was hollow: he therefore repassed it several times, and finding the effect still the same, he conceived a strong notion that something was buried there; when he came on board, he related what he had remarked to me, and I went myself to the spot, with a small party, furnished with spades and pickaxes, and saw the spot opened to a considerable depth, but we found nothing, nor did there appear to be any hollow or vault as was expected. As we were returning through the woods, we found two very large skulls, which, by the teeth, appeared to have belonged to some beasts of prey, but of what kind we could not guess."

So these were (in Byron's words) howling, roaring, large wild beasts. The skulls were large, some unknwon beast of prey.

Puma sounds like the most likely option, though jaguars could also have been present in that area in the mid eighteenth century. I doubt any megafaunal predators were alive at that time. Smaller beasts could have been the D. avus wolf-fox but it wouldn't have roared, it was a canid, so it would have howled or growled.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall © 

On Puma parasites and human presence in South America

A paper by Romina S. Petrigh et al, Ancient parasitic DNA reveals Toxascaris leonina presence in Final Pleistocene of South America, (Parasitology, 2019. DOI: 10.1017/S0031182019000787) reported the discovery of a parasitic roundworm in a coprolite (fossilized feces) from a puma (Felis concolor) in Northern Argentina's Puna region. The fossil stool was dated at 16,573–17,002 calibrated years BP.

The finding is indeed remarkable because "Ancient mitochondrial DNA analysis confirmed the zoological origin of the coprolite as Puma concolor and that of parasite eggs as Toxascaris leonina. This is the oldest molecular parasite record worldwide".

Mental constraints

The age is a key factor here because, based on it, the authors dismiss that the parasite that infected the puma was transmitted by domesticated dogs (or cats) as other authors postulate; the paper states this several times:

"This allowed confirming the presence of T. leonina in prehistoric times, presumably even before that of humans in the region...Therefore, the common interpretation that the presence of T. leonina in modern American wild carnivores is a consequence of their contact with domestic dogs or cats (Okulewicz et al., 2012) should no longer be assumed as the only possible explanation".

The date is supposedly older than the currently accepted arrival date of humans in the region hence no domestic dogs could have transmitted the parasite to pumas ("The first human explorers who ventured into the area ca. 11 000 years ago")

So, the authors cannot avoid the current time frame for human presence in America. But, what if there were humans here 100,000 years ago, would that have affected the puma parasites? They wouldn't of had dogs with them -domestication date of dogs is much earlier anyway. The point is that human presence is irrelevant to their finding.

I mention this because scientists cannot escape from their mental straitjackets and thes authors mention the 11 Ky date as important-it isn't. But, let's go back to the paper:

A natural origin is suggested, and I fully agree with it: "Canids and felids are infected by ingesting rodents and paratenic hosts and also directly by contact with feces with eggs containing infective larvae. "

Regarding its identity as a Toxascaris leonina the paper indicates that "The BLASTN analysis showed an identity range of 96–93% between cox1 fragment of T. leonina European and Asia isolates from different hosts (canids including dog, wolf and European fox, and felids including Eurasian lynx and South China tiger). Pairwise analysis among available T. leonina sequences showed a wide range of identity percentages, from 98 to 93%. A maximum of 1% intra-specific divergence within Iranian isolates has been reported (Mikaeili et al., 2015). Thus, this 4% divergence with ancient T. leonina could be attributed to different temporal and geographic origins."

So American T. leonina are distinct from Asian ones due to "different temporal and geographic origins", which makes sense, after all the puma belongs to a lineage that originated 6.7 Mya. Nowadays it consists of three species: puma, and on a contiguous branch the American jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi)). The third species is the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) which 100,000 years ago migrated across Beringia into Eurasia and finally into Africa (this is a real "Out of America and Into Africa" event).

Puma surely got the roundworm from some non-human agent (I mean that domesticated dogs had no role in it), yet the authors had to point it out: "At a regional level, these aDNA studies have also allowed confirming the presence of pumas in the southern Puna at the end of the Pleistocene. This has significant implications for the natural history of the region, as well as for inferring the ecological context immediately previous – as far as is known so far – to the first human explorers who ventured into the area ca. 11 000 years ago".

But, as I said further up, humans could have been here in America for one million years and this would have no impact whatsoever on the fact that this team of scientists found ancient roundworm in fossil puma poo.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2014 by Austin Whittall ©