I never trust anything I read on the Internet without checking first. I even double-check snopes. I confess, then, that I have no idea if this article I’ve linked to (see source link below) is for real or not. Doesn’t matter. It’s a photograph of a weird-looking something, and as weird-looking somethings, photoshopped or not, tend to snag my attention, as they do yours, I trust, I decided to give it, and the article showcasing it, a closer look. What is this bizarre dead creature supposedly unearthed in the Udachnaya pipe open-pit diamond mine in Siberia? The miners seem to think it’s a new species of dinosaur, but it looks awfully recent for a prehistoric fossil. (I have no idea how the writer of the linked-to article [see source below] arrived at a possible age of between “252 and 66 million years” for the creature. The article doesn’t say.) The unidentified little monster will be taken to the city of Yakutsk for genetic testing. Honestly the little beastie could be anything, but until a mundane identification is provided we are free to indulge our wildest imaginings.
The photograph of the miner holding the whatsit may be a case of forced perspective, the old fisherman’s trick of holding a small fish closer to the camera to make it look larger. We can judge from the miner’s glove, though, that the creature is not very big. Heck, it could be a large rat. The only thing we can say for certain is that it has a set of nasty-looking teeth. Smile for the camera, beastie!
