The Strange Case of the Baby Dragon

In 2004, an Englishman named Allistair Mitchell made a stunning announcement to the press. He said he'd been asked by a friend to investigate an unusual object that the man had discovered in a garage in Oxfordshire. The object, preserved in large glass jar, appeared to be a baby dragon.

Mitchell claimed that a metal tin found near the dragon contained German paperwork dating from the 1890's. According to the documents, the creature had been offered to the British Natural History Museum but was rejected as a fake by the museum's experts. Mitchell suggested that German scientists might have created the dragon in an effort to dupe their English counterparts. This time, the usually skeptical Natural History Museum was intrigued and offered to examine the specimen it had rejected more than a hundred years earlier.

As it turns out, the unusual beast was a hoax. But the Germans weren't to blame. Allistair Mitchell had gone to great lengths to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. He had commissioned a well-known special effects company to sculpt the creature and had its glass jar handmade on the Isle of Wight. His motivation? He needed a publisher for a book he was writing. And I'm pleased to report that his mission was a success.

On a related note, in May of this year, the American Museum of Natural History in New York will be featuring an exhibit that "tracks the origins of legendary creatures including dragons, unicorns, mermaids, and sea serpents." I can hardly wait!