A woolly mammoth has reportedly been seen and videotaped in Siberia, offering irrefutable proof that the giant hairy prehistoric elephants -- believed to have gone extinct thousands of years ago -- still exist.

That is, of course, if this new video shows an actual mammoth crossing a Siberian river. According to The Sun, a government engineer, conducting a survey for a potential new road last summer, saw the beast in question in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug region of Siberia.

He supposedly filmed the creature. And here is where so many questions come to mind:

-- Why is the original video just 10 seconds long? Is that the only amount of time the videographer had left on his battery? Why couldn't he have kept shooting to see what the animal would do when it reached the other side of the river?

-- Also, as pointed out by Kecia Stewart in The Fayetteville Observer, if you look closely at the full screen version of the video, the river wake appears to follow the animal's legs, rather than moving briskly downstream.

-- If this video was shot last summer, why is it only now being revealed?

-- And how is it possible that, once again, a remarkable "smoking gun"-type video is presented to the world by the new P.T. Barnum of the modern era: Paranormal writer Michael Cohen, who claims the copyright on this mammoth video.

The All News Web impresario is not new to presenting incredible out-of-this world videos to an eager audience, hungry to believe in things that are, at best, dubious.

In 2011, Cohen offered "smoking gun" videos of aliens and spaceships.

And now, according to Cohen, people shouldn't be surprised that there might still be living mammoths.

"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," he's quoted in The Sun.

"Siberia is an enormous territory and much of it remains completely unexplored and untouched by humans," he added.

While that may be true, so far the Internet is brimming with commenters who think this mammoth story is a mammoth joke.

"A bear with a fish in its mouth."

"A fish with a bear in its mouth."

"It's funny how videos like these are produced with a very blurry lens."

"An elephant that fled from a circus!"

"Chuck Norris' dog."

"Chupacabra."

Only one cautionary piece of advice needs mentioning here: Don't believe everything you see, hear or are told until all the facts are in.

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