Goldstein said:That's a dried ray or skate, definitely not a chupacabra... do a search for "Jenny Haniver" (sp?)...
You're right :lol: ...I missed the promised "expose" on last night's 10 PM news (I was out for the evening) but I saw the critter's true identity in today's paper:
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/metro/30 ... -12-05.htm
(subscribers only)
Saturday, February 12, 2005
It's Creepy, Yes, But No Chupacabra
By Barbara Armijo
Journal Staff Writer
The Weekly World News won't need to bump the latest two-headed alien sighting off its cover for the oddity identified by New Mexico Game and Fish biologists last week.
A creepy-looking skeleton found on the West Mesa about four years ago is not the remains of a dreaded chupacabra, a mythical creature said to suck the blood from goats. Chupacabras have been immortalized in the TV show "X-Files." They have been said to be haunting ranchers in Puerto Rico for generations.
No haunting in Albuquerque.
The creature's a skate, a member of the stingray family that for whatever reason wound up on the mesa before someone stumbled upon it.
"My friend was walking out there and he kicked it up," Bob Wheeler said.
Wheeler kept the skeletal remains because he said they were just creepy enough to be interesting.
"I'd show people, just to freak them out," Wheeler said. "Just kept it in a box."
Then one day someone who worked at Game and Fish suggested he take it into the office to find out what it really was.
"We identified it that day," Brian Gleadle, chief of Northwest Operations for New Mexico Game and Fish, said.
"No mystery. It's a skate that has been cut up. It's common for a slice of the actual wing to be used as a food source, and that's what we believe was the case with this one."
The myth was put to rest last week.
Gleadle said there he couldn't tell if someone intentionally cut and molded the skeleton to make it look even more weird than it already is.
"Someone had to have caught it in the ocean, most likely in the Gulf of Mexico," Gleadle said. "Then they probably cut the part that was edible and tossed the rest."
He said the remains are at least a couple of years old.
Wheeler said he found the skeleton in 2002 and just never cared to find out what it was until someone suggested he take it into Game and Fish.
After state biologists identified it, Wheeler put it back in the box he had brought it in and took it home.
"Like I said, it's something weird, so I'm going to keep it," he said. "You know, conversation piece."