Is that a woolly mammoth trundling across a Siberian river?

The Sun newspaper reports that a videographer has captured the incredible – a woolly mammoth crossing a turbulent river in the vast Siberian wilderness.

Don’t laugh – it’s not that far-fetched. Although scientists estimate that the woolly mammoth disappeared from most of its range at the end of the Pleistocene (some 10,000 years ago), an isolated population was still living on Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Siberia, until roughly 1700 BC. And that means a few remaining woollies lumbered around until well after the invention of writing by humans.

But could they have escaped our notice in this day of global satellites, spy planes and thorough scientific expeditions to practically every corner of the world? New species are discovered every year by those very expeditions full of astonished scientists. The planet surely harbors secrets and surprises we have not dreamed up.

But as for the video… Well, many believe it to be an outright hoax, to be blunt. They point to the fact that it was posted by Michael Cohen, a UFO enthusiast who has posted questionable videos of alleged UFO’s hovering around in other remote places. A UFO-logist who also finds a mammoth? What are the statistical odds of that coincidence?

Then there is the decided brevity of the video. If you found a woolly mammoth picking through your campsite, how likely would you be to shut off your Flip in ten seconds (provided you had the presence of mind to pick your jaw off the forest floor and actually remember where you stashed the thing)? In this video, however, the not-so-amazed videographer shuts the camera off before the bear, er, mammoth makes it to the river shore.

Of course the footage is incredibly fuzzy, jumpy and unclear, so that we are not quite sure what the heck we are looking at. Many vote that it is simply a bear with a fish in its mouth. Where are those CSI guys with their high-resolution magnification technology (never mind the pixels) when we need them?

A Hollywood video-effects artist who has previously analyzed faked UFO videos, Derek Serra, believes that the video was intentionally blurred to obscure the identity of the animal. "Even low-resolution cameras can focus fairly well on something," Serra said. "But there's really nothing in this video in focus. The rocks in the foreground have a blur to them that doesn't seem natural."

And the final blow: the video was apparently taken last June. Would a discovery of this magnitude lay around dormant for over half a year? Who could sit on something so big – in so many ways – for so long?

But don’t take our word for it. Judge for yourself and watch the amazing woolly mammoth below:

Source
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Comment and add to the story without registration, but keep the comments meaningful please. Links are not accepted.