METEPEC CREATURE

Opening

In 2007, workers at a ranch near Metepec, in the State of Mexico, said they had caught a small creature in a trap: pale, hairless, with a long tail, large dark eyes and an almost human face. They said it was alive and screaming when they found it, and that they killed it. The body was preserved, bought by the Mexican UFO broadcaster Jaime Maussan, and shown around the world as a possible "baby alien." It later turned out to be a monkey, skinned and reshaped by a taxidermist.

Timeline

2007The story breaks: a creature caught in a trap on a ranch near Metepec, said by four people who worked there, including the owner, to have been seen alive before they killed it. Photographs of the small, wrinkled body spread rapidly online.

2007 onwardsMaussan buys the body and presents it on Mexican television and at events as possible non-human biological evidence, perhaps an unknown hybrid.

Over the following yearsAnalyses of the specimen fail to support anything unusual. Accounts identify it as a primate, altered to look strange: some say a squirrel monkey, others a marmoset.

LaterA taxidermist, Urso Moreno Ruíz, is reported to have confessed that he made the specimen. In his account, a zoo he worked for sent him a dead monkey for taxidermy, and he altered it and placed it in a trap on the ranch where he worked.

Key figures

The ranch workers who said they found the creature alive, whose account began the story.

Jaime Maussan, the veteran Mexican UFO broadcaster who bought and promoted the body. He would later present the Nazca mummies to Mexico's Congress.

Urso Moreno Ruíz, the taxidermist reported to have admitted making it.

Physical and documentary trail

The specimen exists and was examined, and the conclusion is consistent: a primate body that had been skinned and reshaped. Accounts disagree on the details, including the exact species and when and how the taxidermist's confession was made, and the case is now mostly told through secondary sources. Later stories added further mystery, including a claim that the ranch owner died in a car fire. These are part of the legend and have not been documented.

Things you might not know

• The tail gave it away. The long tail that made the creature look so strange is ordinary for the small monkeys it was later identified as.
• The species is still argued over. Some sources say a squirrel monkey, others a buffy-tufted marmoset.
• It was meant to be taxidermy. In the confession reported, the monkey arrived as a routine job from a zoo.
• Maussan still cites it. He has compared newer reports of a pale creature near the US border with the Metepec case.

Competing explanations

A doctored monkey. The examinations of the body and the reported confession agree. This is the accepted explanation, and nothing has seriously challenged it.

An unknown creature. The original claim, resting on the workers' account and the body's strange appearance. Once the body was examined, there was nothing left to support it.

Later life of the case

The Metepec creature is a standard entry in lists of alien-body hoaxes, and a reference point whenever a new strange carcass appears. It also sits awkwardly in Maussan's record alongside the Roswell Slides and the Nazca mummies.

Finding

The Metepec creature was a monkey, altered by a taxidermist. The body was examined, it was identified, and a confession was reported. The only thing that remains uncertain is the small print: the species and the exact story of how it ended up in the trap.

What still will not resolve: whether the people who said they saw it alive were taken in by the hoax or part of it, since their account has never been tested against the taxidermist's.