Diplocaulus

This article is about a confirmed hoax

The subject of this article, be it purported cryptid or a supposed event, is known to have been deliberately made up.

Diplocaulus was a genus of lepospondyl amphibian which lived from the Late Carboniferous to the Late Permian, 306—355 million years ago. A number of hoaxed or misinterpreted photographs and videos depicting allegedly live specimens of Diplocaulus have been spread.

Hammerhead lizard

The famous "Diplocaulus in a dish" photograph.

In 2004, a photograph showing what appeared to be a living Diplocaulus in a dish of water appeared online. According to Maltese rumours, the animal was discovered on a rocky beach at Il-Maghluq, Marsascala, on Malta, and Maltese biologist Patrick J. Schembri wrote a letter on the subject to Malta's Sunday Times on 21 November 2004. However, the photo does not show a living animal, but a gypsum-based model of Diplocaulus created by an unknown Japanese model-maker for a magazine competition in 1992.

2011—2012 videos

A YouTube user with the username SouldierTVSP uploaded several videos of what they claim are live Diplocaulus from 22 July 2011 to 11 January 2012. Karl Shuker writes that the subject appears to be a small pink toy Diplocaulus in a river, moving only with the current. The Diplocaulus in the final video is larger than the other animal, with iridescent green skin.

Goro Furuta model

Another Diplocaulus photograph, showing the animal resting in shallow water, spread online in 2015 after being posted on Facebook. Though it was originally suspected to be a manipulated photograph of a hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) or mata-mata turtle (Chelus fimbriata), Karl Shuker quickly traced the photograph to Japanese model-maker Goro Furuta. As with the hammerhead lizard, the model was not created with the intention of hoaxing people, and Furuta never claimed that it was anything other than a model. The idea that it depicted a live animal began when unsourced photographs of the model were circulated online.