Is This Really A Woolly Mammoth?

Written By: editor

Published Date: February 10, 2012 Last Edited: February 10, 2012

editor

A strangely out-of-focus video was released by The Sun this week that shows a lumbering animal walking across a river in Siberia. The video alleges the animal to be a live woolly mammoth in what would be a remarkable find as the mammoth has been extinct for nearly 4,000 years.

The footage was taken by a government-employed road surveyor last summer in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug region of Siberia, and is strangely reminiscent of the 40 year old Bigfoot film, brief and fuzzy.

Many believe the video is a hoax and point to several suspicious aspects of the video. For instance, the fact that the man who posted the video, Michael Cohen, is a paranormal enthusiast and has been involved with several other videos of UFOs and other phenomena of questionable authenticity, reports Benjamin Radford of MSNBC’s Life’s Little Mysteries.

Some comments on the video believe it is not computer generated, but that the creature is just a bear with a large fish in its mouth. That would explain its relatively small size for a mammoth, the shape of the “trunk” on its head, and the color.

Hollywood video-effects artist Derek Serra, who has previously analyzed faked UFO videos, told Life´s Little Mysteries that the video, in his opinion, appears to have been intentionally blurred, to obscure the more mundane identity of the animal.

“Even low-resolution cameras can focus fairly well on something,” Serra explains. “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.”

The film was allegedly shot last summer, so why did the Russian engineer keep such an amazing discovery quiet for so long instead of going public with the biggest science story of the century?

Mr. Cohen defends his video by saying, “If surviving woolly mammoths were found in Siberia, it could run against Russia´s plans to further develop and exploit the area´s considerable resources. It would be potentially one of the greatest discoveries ever.”

Comments