Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

A “Veterinary Assistant” featured in the whole Metepec Creature brouhaha, “Ángel Palacios Núñez”, is, according to Alejandro Franz, in fact Urso Moreno Ruíz, nephew of Mario Moreno, and a taxidermist.

More importantly, Urso Ruíz apparently confessed in an Internet forum he indeed hoaxed the creature, which is indeed just a squirrel-monkey:

“It’s just the corpse of a skinned squirrel-monkey. I took its ears out and involved it with all the hair and fluids of all animals I could find, then I dried it. All samples they take of it will come out as being of different animals.”

Of course, we already knew it was a skinned squirrel-monkey:

He goes on:

“Mr Mario quickly sold it to Maussán for 300.000 pesos [U$23,000], as you can see after four years they still can’t realize it’s a hoax.”

And tries to defend himself:

“I must say I didn’t claim it was real. That was Maussán who claimed it was real. He believed it. All the show was a hoax that got out of control, but after four years I’m happy to see one of my creations going around the world and through many scientists and tests and they still haven’t figured out what it is. I may have fooled science! LOL”

Nauseating, isn’t it?

Franz warns that, contrary to what Urso Ruíz claims, he did claim in video that the creature was “a strange animal”. Lies. Franz further accuses Maussán, Mario Moreno and Marco Salazar of creating this whole fraud from the beginning. It’s indeed interesting they should go with DNA testing right away, which is not their usual practice with such “finds” at all. It’s as if they knew the results would be inconclusive.

Of course, from the beginning people noticed it looked exactly like a skinned monkey. People also know very well Maussán is part of Ufology’s Hall of Shame.

So people had every reason not to believe the story. Reason, apparently, is something the History Channel’s MonsterQuest team lacks.

But then, reason is something that may be relative. Money and ratings can make everything relative, one would guess. How much money did all those involved, knowingly or not, make from this hoax?

This really makes me sick. It should make you too. And the skinned, dried monkey is not the culprit. [via Alcione]