YouTuber Coyote Peterson’s ‘primate skull’ claim has scientists suspect

YouTuber Coyote Peterson has taken the internet by storm after claiming in his recent Instagram post that he found a “primate skull” in British Columbia.

The internet personality is best known for his Animal Planet series Coyote Peterson: Braving Nature. He also has over 140,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel.

His latest social media post claiming he’s found a “primate skull” has drawn a lot of reactions, not only from his followers, but also from a few scientists.

Coyote Peterson claims to have found a ‘primate skull’ in British Columbia

The YouTuber, 40, posted five photos to his social media on Thursday, July 7. The images feature a massive part of a skull soaked in dirt and muddy water. A few others see Coyote recovering the skull submerged in the muddy pool.

“BREAKING NEWS,” the internet personality writes in the captions, as he claims he “found a large primate skull in BC – filmed it, cut the footage.” He also said he would release an episode on the same topic on his show Animal Planet. brave desert This weekend.

“I have kept this a secret for several weeks…YES I have the skull, it is currently in a secure location awaiting examination by a primatologist,” Coyote writes. “Absolutely unreal…we thought it was a bear skull when we found it, I can 100% guarantee it is not. The skull was found partially buried underground in a deep ravine of the forest after a huge storm in Northwest Pac where clearly a bunch of trees and dirt have been disturbed.

“I don’t know if this is what you all think it might be… but I can’t explain the discovery of a primate skull in the Pac Northwest without wondering! What do you think?” asks the YouTuber.

Scientists ‘shut down’ YouTuber’s claims

Experts reportedly told Live Science that “Peterson’s claim is highly suspect and that secretly extracting and transporting animal remains across national borders may be illegal.”

Yinan Wang, author of The 50 State Fossils: A Guidebook for Aspiring Paleontologists, said the skull closely resembles a cast of a gorilla skull sold on AliExpress.

In a series of tweets, Wang makes several side-by-side comparisons of the AliExpress product and images posted by Coyote.

“Looking at the pictures, it’s not the Bone Clones gorilla skull. But it’s very close to this one on Ali Express spotted by @offshoreoddity, although it has this weird bone on the side of the skull” , Wang writes on Twitter.

Darren Naish, a vertebrate paleontologist and science broadcaster in the UK, told Live Science: “This is definitely a gorilla skull, as evidenced by numerous anatomical details and as verified by a list of experts.

“Furthermore, it appears to be identical to commercially available casts of a specific gorilla skull.”

“We can immediately rule out the idea that it could be a real skull of an unknown primate. No. It’s a cast of a known species,” Naish added.

Fans make ‘bigfoot’ jokes after YouTuber’s discovery

Many Coyote followers started joking that the skull was that of a bigfoot after his last post.

For the uninitiated, Bigfoot is a popular legend in North America. There are several stories of a seven-foot-tall hairy man who lurks in the woods and sometimes scares hikers and campers. Their common name is Sasquatch.

“Did Coyote discover #bigfoot?” a fan commented under the YouTuber’s Instagram post with a laughing emoji.

“So that’s big foot,” joked another fan.

“When does the ‘Get Bitten by a Bigfoot’ video drop,” another fan commented.

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