An old mermaid was recently found, stored in the archives of the Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, and a research team from the University of Lincoln decided to examine it. So far they've discovered that its hair is human, its upper body is constructed of wood and wire, its teeth are carved bone, and its eyes are mollusc shell. Future tests will determine what fish its tail came from. (link: BBC News)


At first I thought it looked like the Bloomsbury Mermaid (pictured below). But no, they're definitely different mermaids. Though similar in design. (Thanks, Hudson!)

Near the end of December, reports emerged of a yeti caught in the Caucasus mountain, in the Russian republic of Ingushetia. Interfax reported Bagaudin Marshani, former head of Ingushetia's labor ministry, as saying:


Marshani also said that the creature was being displayed in a private zoo in the village of Surkhakhi, and that a team of scientists was on its way from Moscow to study it.

A video was posted on youtube showing the yeti running away from a hunter. The yeti looked a lot like a guy in an ape suit.


And, of course, it was a guy in an ape suit. Specifically, it was an Ingush hotel worker in an ape suit.

It turned out the yeti capture was a publicity stunt to raise money for charity. Marshani explained, "It was a promotional event, a New Year joke to put the spotlight on orphans and children from dysfunctional and low-income families."

People came to the zoo to see the yeti, and once there, they were asked to donate money to the orphan charity. Also on display at the zoo were ten talking animals, including a wolf and a squirrel. Links: pravda, rt.com.

An article by Nick Redfern on mania.com discusses the theory that the Loch Ness Monster (and Bigfoot) may be "phantimals". That is, "the spirits or ghosts of creatures that became extinct thousands of years ago." This theory is promoted by paranormal expert Joshua P. Warren, author of Pet Ghosts, who argues that "the world’s most famous lake-monster, Nessie, might actually represent some form of 'ghostly plesiosaur,' rather than a literal, living animal or colony of animals."

Nice theory. But what I found more interesting was the next part of the article, in which Redfern discusses the research of Jim Marrs, author of PSI Spies, who learned that during some of the U.S. government's experiments with remote viewing (the Stargate Project perhaps?) remote viewers were asked to focus on Nessie and detail what they saw:


And here I went all the way to Loch Ness to see Nessie. I could have just stayed in San Diego and remote viewed her.

Apparently, it's golf balls. From cnn.com:


It would be kind of sad if Nessie died choking on a golf ball.

Nessie Hunter Robert Rines died of heart failure yesterday in his Boston home. From Boston.com:

According to the Daily Mail, recently released documents from the archives of the British Natural History Museum reveal that in 1987 the Museum struck a deal with the bookmaker William Hill. The Museum agreed that, should the body of the Loch Ness Monster ever be found, the Museum would provide "positive identification." Only if it receives a positive id, will the bookmaker pay out on bets about the creature's existence. (It offers odds of 500/1 on the Loch Ness Monster being found within a year.)

It seems like a pretty good deal for the Museum, since the bookmaker pays them £1,000 per year to maintain the contract.

I'm guessing it's a hoax: The Daily Telegraph reports on an ongoing controversy about a "baby alien" discovered in Mexico in 2007. It was supposedly discovered by a farmer who drowned it out of fear. This farmer later burned to death in a parked car (killed by the baby's parents?). Scientists are said to be baffled by the creature.

I missed this while on vacation. A security guard looking at Google Earth in his sparetime found what he believes might be evidence of the Loch Ness monster. Almost everyone else thinks it looks obviously like a boat, except for Loch Ness researcher Adrian Shine who is quoted as saying it looks "really intriguing" and deserves "further study."

On Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman notes a similarity between Patty (the Bigfoot that stars in the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film) and the ape creatures that appear briefly in the 1966 film One Million Years B.C. (starring Raquel Welch).

In the images below, Patty is on the left, and one of the One Million Years B.C. creatures is on the right.



Lots of people have suggested a link between 1967's Planet of the Apes and the Patterson-Gimlin film, but a link to One Million Years B.C. is a new one. Maybe Patty will turn out to have been Raquel Welch in an ape suit.

Loch Ness is a finalist in a campaign to name the New 7 Wonders of Nature. Other finalists include the Amazon River, the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, and Mount Kilimanjaro.

Loch Ness is very scenic and geologically very interesting, but Willie Cameron of Loch Ness Marketing thinks that the Loch should have a leg-up on the competition because, "None of the other nominees has a legacy we know as the Loch Ness Monster. Whatever it is, it is unexplainable and that is unique."

By that reasoning, shouldn't the North Pole also be a contender, since it's the home of Santa Claus? [Highland News]

In its current issue, the Journal of Biogeography has published an article whose authors use ecological niche modelling software to predict the distribution of Sasquatch in western North America. The authors write:


The authors then created an ecological niche model for the black bear, Ursus americanus, and discovered that the two models (for Bigfoot and black bear) were remarkably similar, leading them to conclude that "many Bigfoot sightings are, in fact, of black bears." (via New Scientist)

A Connecticut woman driving along Unquowa Road told police that she "almost hit Sasquatch." Upon investigation, the police discovered that Sasquatch was really "a 16-year-old boy dressed in a gorilla-like costume." He was standing at the corner in his costume, waving at cars as they passed. (news times)

Reminds me of the Little Blue Man Hoax of 1958.