England’s Coastal Find: A 200-Year-Old Mermaid Washes Ashore

This is a creature that has traveled a lot: in August 2006, we received the pHographs shown above with messages claiming they depicted a mermaid (or a sea mop, or an alien) from Campeche (Mexico), Veda (South Africa), Cebu (Philippines), and Swaziland.

The correct answer here, however, is “part of the above”: these are images of a model created by artist Juan Cabana, offered for sale in a street-side action (more are available) and advertised with an elaborate backstory about how the seller had scouted the “mermaid or sea monster” while “exploring desolate areas of Fort Desoto Beach at the southern tip of St. Petersburg, Florida.”

(The same seller has offered other items of equally dubious reputation, such as a “Time Traveler UFO Organic Corpse Αuthentic ΑLIEN Corpse” (more available), which looked uncannily similar to a gray carving I had just purchased from another eBay seller.)

Creatures identified as “mermen” (half-human, half-fish creatures that live in the sea, both male “mermaids” and female “sirens”) have been a staple of folklore and mythology for many centuries.

Although the modern popular image of mermen is almost exclusively limited to depictions of attractive, man-sized females with upper torsos and fish-like tails (as exemplified by Ariel, the heroine of Disney’s popular 1989 film adaptation of “The Little Mermaid” (an 1836 children’s tale by Haps Christia (Aderse)), that image has not always been the standard.

Depictions of mermaids as hideous, tiny creatures, and the use of parts of other animals (mainly monkeys and fish) to create specimens of such creatures, are very, very old, as evidenced by an alleged mummified mermaid that was displayed in Japan several centuries ago and is believed to be up to 1,400 years old.

The mysterious Dr. Griffi was actually a fictional character played by Levi Lyma, an associate of the famous American showmap and traveling salesman Pt. This is one creature that has traveled a lot: in August 2006, we received the pHographs shown above with messages claiming that they depicted a mermaid (or a sea mop, or an alien) from Campeche (Mexico), Veda (South Africa), Cebu (Philippines), and Swaziland.

The correct answer here, however, is “part of the above”: these are images of a model created by artist Juan Cabana, offered for sale in a street-side action (more are available) and advertised with an elaborate backstory about how the seller had scouted the “mermaid or sea monster” while “exploring desolate areas of Fort Desoto Beach at the southern tip of St. Petersburg, Florida.”

(The same seller has offered other items of equally dubious reputation, such as a “Time Traveler UFO Organic Corpse Αuthentic ΑLIEN Corpse” (more available), which looked uncannily similar to a gray carving I had just purchased from another eBay seller.)

Creatures identified as “mermen” (half-human, half-fish creatures that live in the sea, both male “mermaids” and female “sirens”) have been a staple of folklore and mythology for many centuries.

Although the modern popular image of mermen is almost exclusively limited to depictions of attractive, man-sized females with upper torsos and fish-like tails (as exemplified by Ariel, the heroine of Disney’s popular 1989 film adaptation of “The Little Mermaid” (an 1836 children’s tale by Haps Christia (Aderse)), that image has not always been the standard.

Depictions of mermaids as hideous, tiny creatures, and the use of parts of other animals (mainly monkeys and fish) to create specimens of such creatures, are very, very old, as evidenced by an alleged mummified mermaid that was displayed in Japan several centuries ago and is believed to be up to 1,400 years old.

The mysterious Dr. Griffi was actually a fictional character played by Levi Lyma, an associate of the famous American showman and traveling salesman Pt.

Barnum, who exhibited the “careful” creature throughout the United States and opened his New York-based American Museum for a couple of decades before it was lost when the museum was destroyed by fire in 1865. The “mermaid” was actually reconstructed from simply papier-mâché, fish parts, the body of an infant orangutan and a monkey’s head.

Barnum, who exhibited the “careful” creature throughout the United States and opened his New York-based American Museum for a couple of decades before it was lost when the museum was destroyed by fire in 1865. The “mermaid” was actually reconstructed from simply papier-mâché, fish parts, the body of an infant orangutan and a monkey’s head.