During mid-December 2017, the worldwide media contained many reports concerning the decomposed carcass of a fairly small creature that had been found at a long-abandoned sub-station in Uttarakhand, northern India.
Thereason why such an ostensibly insignificant find was attracting such attention, however, was the remarkable claim that this might be the desiccated corpse of a dinosaur!
According to various original Indian news reports that were subsequently circulated and disseminated extensively in Western media accounts, it was a dinosaur-like fossil but with flesh still on its bones that had been found in mid-November by an electrician while cleaning out the sub-station, previously untouched for 35 years, in the small city of Jaspur.
However, accompanying photos and a short video showed a creature that was clearly no fossil and certainly no dinosaur either, but rather a mummified present-day cadaver of something that was unquestionably mammalian, as unambiguously demonstrated by its diagnostically mammalian dentition.
Notwithstanding this immediately obvious fact, the reports stated that the carcass was to be sent to Dr Bahadur Kotlia, a palæontologist at Kumaun University, for historical and scientific analyses, including carbon-14 tests, in order to determine its age and identity. Moreover, Dr Parag Madhukar Dhakate, a Conservator with the Indian Forest Service, was quoted as having said: “It looks like a dinosaur, but we can’t say anything until all the tests are done”.
In reality, the photos and video showed unequivocally that it looked nothing like a dinosaur but everything like a modestly-sized mammalian carnivore, either a mustelid (weasel, marten) or a herpestid (mongoose). Yellow-throated martens Martes flavigula do exist in the area where this specimen was found, but are not common there, and do not normally associate with human dwellings anyway, not even abandoned ones.
Conversely mongooses are much more common there, and are far more likely to be found in or near human habitation. In addition, the broad base of the deceased creature’s tail, and its relatively straight claws and longer limbs, indicate a mongoose identity more than a marten or some other mustelid. So, not a dinosaur at all, simply a misidentification, albeit one of truly monstrous proportion.
Thereason why such an ostensibly insignificant find was attracting such attention, however, was the remarkable claim that this might be the desiccated corpse of a dinosaur!
According to various original Indian news reports that were subsequently circulated and disseminated extensively in Western media accounts, it was a dinosaur-like fossil but with flesh still on its bones that had been found in mid-November by an electrician while cleaning out the sub-station, previously untouched for 35 years, in the small city of Jaspur.
However, accompanying photos and a short video showed a creature that was clearly no fossil and certainly no dinosaur either, but rather a mummified present-day cadaver of something that was unquestionably mammalian, as unambiguously demonstrated by its diagnostically mammalian dentition.
Notwithstanding this immediately obvious fact, the reports stated that the carcass was to be sent to Dr Bahadur Kotlia, a palæontologist at Kumaun University, for historical and scientific analyses, including carbon-14 tests, in order to determine its age and identity. Moreover, Dr Parag Madhukar Dhakate, a Conservator with the Indian Forest Service, was quoted as having said: “It looks like a dinosaur, but we can’t say anything until all the tests are done”.
In reality, the photos and video showed unequivocally that it looked nothing like a dinosaur but everything like a modestly-sized mammalian carnivore, either a mustelid (weasel, marten) or a herpestid (mongoose). Yellow-throated martens Martes flavigula do exist in the area where this specimen was found, but are not common there, and do not normally associate with human dwellings anyway, not even abandoned ones.
Conversely mongooses are much more common there, and are far more likely to be found in or near human habitation. In addition, the broad base of the deceased creature’s tail, and its relatively straight claws and longer limbs, indicate a mongoose identity more than a marten or some other mustelid. So, not a dinosaur at all, simply a misidentification, albeit one of truly monstrous proportion.
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