Posted on 02/08/2012 2:52:34 PM PST by Red Badger
A BEAST lurches through icy waters in a sighting a paranormal investigator thinks could prove woolly mammoths are not extinct after all.
The animal – thought to have mostly died out roughly 4,000 years ago – was apparently filmed wading through a river in the freezing wilds of Siberia.
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.
The official was reportedly in the area surveying for a planned road.
Paranormal writer Michael Cohen said: "Rumours of a handful of mammoths still kicking around in the vast wilderness of Siberia have been circulating for decades and occasionally sightings by locals have occurred.
"Siberia is an enormous territory and much of it remains completely unexplored and untouched by humans. "
Woolly mammoths roamed the Earth 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age.
A small pocket remained on and around Wrangel Island, off the coast of Siberia, and these did not die out until 3,500 years ago.
Mr Cohen, 41, added: "It is highly possible that a number of species, extinct elsewhere, survive in the area.
"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."
But viewers are divided on the nature of the animal seen in the video. Some have dismissed it as a hoax while others reckon it is an elephant lost in the Siberian wilderness. The third theory is the sighting shows a bear eating a huge fish. What do you think?
It’s a Wooley Mammoth with a Bear in its mouth. The majestic tusks of course were sawed off by ivory hunters. They did it while it was sleeping because it was the last one and they couldn’t bring themselves to kill it.
Yeah, it looks like a bear ... and from the size of it I wouldn’t want to meet it. Out there in Siberiland, bears will roll rocks down hills at railway workers and survey teams. That’s tool use, baby, and it means there may be an Einstein or two among the lumbering bears way out there.
When you can't see its bottom half because it's hip-deep in moving water, anything moves like an elephant.
Zero doubt that it in the elephant species category.
That would mean Asian elephant or African elephant, and neither of those have ever been reported that far north.
It’s a mammoth!!
I’m 99% convinced.
As it’s pointed out in the article, Siberia is a HUGE area... makes Alaska look like Rhode Island or something.
The fact that it’s a road engineer makes it likely there are not many roads there, which means very few people...
I can’t believe I wasted my time to go look at a “Wooly Mammoth” video on the “Sun” site, but I did. Floppy fish in a bear’s mouth for goodness sake. *sigh*
Native americans claim they hunted mammoths only 500 years ago IN THE LOWER 48!
I don’t believe it though. I think the stories come from the frozen specimens they find in thawing glaciers. THAT is a known fact that they ate frozen mammoth meat only a couple hundred years ago.
btw, so far I do NOT believe this is a bear in the vid. It is a pachyderm of some kind, IMO.
I don’t know what to think. Its seems so impossible this thing is a mammoth. But it just does NOT look like a bear. Bears have pointier snouts. Their heads are lower. Their legs are not that long. It looks like a young elephant with very short tusks to me. I suppose the white area that I think is a short tusk could be the white underbelly of a fish. The flappy thing that looks like a pachyderm ear could be a patch of molting bear fur blowing in the breeze.
Message from the Fancy Footwork Ping List!
And if it WAS a bear, that would explain why the camera person chose not to pursue the animal in order to get a better picture........
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Riiiight!
Because a wild elephant is SOOOOO much safer than a wild bear.
Dude, that was really lame logic there.
Clearly, this is just an animal that escaped from a zoo or circus, or was kept as an exotic pet until it was too expensive to feed and too difficult to control.
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They have woolly mammoths in zoos and circuses?
lol
;’)
It’s a Siberian River Shark trying to eat the face off of a fat moose!
It is absolutely, positively, NOT a bear. A bear crossing in water like that would look longer, in fact he would probably be swimming and not walking.
Also, the form of a bear that might live in that area would resemble most closely a grizzly or Kodiak bear. Bears of that type, the head and snout is an extension of the shoulders and hump, quite pointy like if you look at them in profile.
This has a predominant head on a definite neck.
Not a bear. Not a chance!
Maybe that bear was really hot for a John West salmon ;^)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Ca6pQL18Y
I am confident Putin will hunt him down.
Wow, I didn’t realize mammoths shaved their legs!
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