It did not take many inquiries about a photo used by The Discovery Channel to find out it was fake. Author George Monbiot noticed some questionable images used in the channel's documentary Megalodon: The Monster Shark Still Lives, including one with a Megalodon alongside Nazi ships. After a bit of digging, he found the images bore signs suggesting they are not even close to real.

The Megalodon is a species of shark that is estimated to have gone extinct around 2 million years ago. The Discovery Channel's documentary purported to have collected evidence that the Megalodon is alive and well, or was, as recently as the fall of the Third Reich.

The image in question showed a dorsal fin and tail fin that measured 64 feet apart cruising alongside a U-boat in a sepia-toned photo watermarked with a swastika in December 1942. Viewers originally pointed out several seemingly faked images in the documentary, but Monbiot was able to not only pinpoint several problems with one such image, but to locate its source.

Some problems Monbiot pointed out after crowdsourcing feedback about the photo:

Nazis didn't watermark photos with a swastika.

Sepia-toned photos are an old-timey trope and were typically used for family photos as an extra processing step on black and white photos to make them look better.

64 feet from fin to fin would have made the Megalodon twice as long as it was in prehistoric times.

In the photo, the fins create no waves or wakes despite the Megalodon's size and probable power, suggesting it's just… sitting there, in the water.

Finally, Monbiot's readers located the source of the photo: it's a still from some footage of U-boats that is absent of any fins suggesting a massive fish.

It's unclear whether the Discovery Channel doctored the photo itself or found it after a third party had added all of these extra elements. Prior to Monbiot's discovery about Discovery, the channel stated that "people are open to exploring different ideas and concepts in addition to the traditional fare that we air." The show also includes a disclaimer that "certain events and characters in this film have been dramatized."

A representative of Discovery Channel, aka "The #1 Nonfiction Media Company," was not immediately available for comment.