Woolly Mammoth Caught on Video in Siberia?

02/13/2012

Check out this video showing a creature that looks surprisingly like a woolly mammoth crossing a river in Siberia.  The fact that woolly mammoths are extinct makes this video extremely odd.

The Sun reports:

"The jaw-dropping footage was caught by a government-employed engineer last summer in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug region of Siberia, it is claimed.

He filmed the elephant-sized creature as it struggled against the racing water.

Its hair matches samples recovered from mammoth remains regularly dug up from the permafrost in frozen Russia."

What do you think?  Could a population of such large creatures go undiscovered?  Woolly mammoths were common during the last Ice Age over 10,000 years ago, although a population survived on Wrangel Island off of Sibera as recently as 3,500 years ago.

Could this be a real mammoth?  Have scientists secretly cloned one of these prehistoric behemoths?  Is it a modern elephant escaped from a zoo or circus?  A deliberate hoax?  Or something else?  What do you think?

UPDATE 2/14/12: Well it was too good to be true.  Turns out that this is a hoax.

PHOTO: A recreation of what a living woolly mammoth might have looked like.

Comments

[Jamie]

Looks like a bear or just an elephant...

[Ivan]

Its a bear with fish..

[jay varma]

Its looks like a bear with fish....

[fukthese]

hahaha, fake, look at it when he zooms in on the animal, fake walking! plus, the photo of the actual mammoth is super big and has two huge tusks!! in conclusion, its just a bear with a fish, if not then is supper fake.

[aguslizar]

ha.ha.ha it'is fake. that 's a bear with his fish. mammoth? ha....ha.

[tigerkeeper]

the waves around the "mammoth" don't break onto the creature. if you look closely the white tips of the water move with the thing. its fake!

[A.F. for Animal Planet]

I vote for bear with a fish.

[Explore Nature]

Thanks for sharing this, it's interesting.

http://spiritofnature99.blogspot.com/

[ilovedogs]

its just a bear with a fish. it looks like it has no tusks

[alex]

its a bear with a fish in its mouth.

[gas furnaces]

I highly doubt its a mammoth, the sketchy footage is the first major reason why, most likely a bear with a fish in its mouth.