On the earth, there have always been many mysterious legends, for example, since ancient times, folk have circulated stories about "mermaids", saying that this is a mysterious creature whose upper body looks like a human being and the lower body is a fish's tail, and at sea, they will confuse the crew of the past through singing, so that they will stay in the sea forever.
However, although the story of the mermaid has been circulating for thousands of years, there is no evidence that there are really mermaids in this world, and even though there have been many records of mermaid sightings, there is no way to prove that these witnesses are true.
So, how exactly do you know if there are mermaids in Earth's oceans? There are two answers. The first is that this mysterious living creature has actually been found in the ocean, so that humans can confirm that the mermaid is real by discovering the identity of the "new species".
The other is to find a complete fossil record of mermaids in the process of archaeology, so that even if there are no mermaids in the earth's oceans today, fossils can prove that they once existed.
For example, in many countries around the world, mermaid remains have been found, or more accurately, "mermaid mummies" have been found over the years, the most noteworthy of which is that many "mermaid mummies" have been found in Japan, and they are all enshrined in temples.
So, are these "mermaid mummies" real?
In Japan, one of the most famous "mermaid mummies" was found in a temple in Okayama Prefecture more than 40 years ago, and there is a very mysterious story about how it appeared in the temple, among local rumors.
It is said that this "mermaid mummy" was discovered by a Japanese fisherman on the coast in the mid-1730s, of course, when it was first discovered, the mermaid was still alive, but it died quickly, so the body was mummified, and since then, it has been placed in a temple.
Unlike the mermaid image that people imagine, this mummy is very ugly in appearance, and it also has terrible "big fangs". So, is it really a mermaid? And is it almost 300 years old?
Now, Japanese experts have finally decided to study it, the first step to do is to thoroughly test this "mermaid mummy" through CT scans, for example, whether it is a "spoof" of two known creatures stitched together?
For example, the United Kingdom once exhibited a "mermaid mummy" that is said to have a history of thousands of years, but it was later confirmed that it was a "prank" spliced on a salmon by the upper body of a monkey, so this time, whether the "mermaid mummy" that has been admired for hundreds of years in Japan is real and very exciting.
So, has there really ever been such a mysterious creature as a mermaid on Earth?
In 1991, a Singaporean media reported that a 12,000-year-old mermaid fossil had been found in Yugoslavia, and then an archaeologist in the United States also said that he believed that mermaids once existed on the earth, but later for some reasons, this mysterious species became extinct.
So, what is the truth? The study believes that mermaids should be mysterious creatures that people have imagined based on known animals, of which the most likely to be mistaken for "mermaids", one is a manatee, the other is a dugong.
From the appearance point of view, manatees and dugongs look a bit alike, they also belong to marine mammals, especially manatees, they have breasts that resemble humans on their chests, which also makes researchers speculate that perhaps in the past, people are not familiar with manatees, when sailing at sea, they see manatees with bare upper bodies in the distance, and mistakenly think that there are "humanoid creatures" like themselves in the ocean.
This also explains why in the past, especially in ancient times, there were many records of witnessing "mermaids" around the world, but nowadays few people see "mermaids" in the sea, because manatees and dugongs are endangered species, and their numbers are very small, so naturally they are rare.
However, some people believe that since there have been records of "mermaids" for thousands of years, and the "mermaids" in folklore look too different from manatees and dugongs, it is impossible to have a "misidentification", so mermaids may also be real, after all, the descriptions of mermaids in ancient and modern China and abroad are surprisingly consistent. So, in your opinion, does this mysterious creature exist? Welcome to leave a message in the comment area and share it with us!