Despite a few tantalizing photos from the Cydonia Zone, thereâ€s obviously no evidence of that. (Photos taken from other angles and with different shadows arenâ€t nearly as evocative.)

I donâ€t think Bigfoot could exist in such close proximity to humans for so long without a corpse turning up, and I donâ€t think thereâ€s plesiosaur in Loch Ness.

Viking 1 image of the Face on Mars from 1976

I think that Travis Walton (immortalized in the 1993 film Fire in the Sky) may actually have been abducted by aliens in 1975.

And I still think itâ€s possible that the United States government picked up some extraterrestrial corpses at Roswell in 1947, but Iâ€m also prepared to believe that those corpses were real live human beings who had been physically altered by the Soviets in the hopes of creating panic in the United States about an alien invasion.

Roswell Daily Record, July 8, 1947

Those are just some of the wonderful and fanciful possibilities that Iâ€d like to believe could be true. Maybe some of them even are.

But that doesnâ€t mean I should believe every new bit of information that appears on the interwebs. In fact, if I want to see any of those things proven true in my lifetime, then I need to be especially vigilant that actual facts and reasonable hypotheses donâ€t get mixed up with a lot of pseudoscience.

Compared to way out there possibilities like those, the idea of a Mayan migration to north Georgia (of all places) sounds downright plausible.

Still, I found it a bit disheartening to see the swiftness with which my Facebook circles, blogs that aspire to some seriousness, and a variety of new media outlets ran with the story from yesterday about a Maya site in north Georgia. The Examiner.com piece, Massive 1,100+ year old Maya site discovered in Georgia’s mountains, has been shared more than 60,000 times on Facebook since being posted yesterday

My response — Is there an 1100 year old Maya site in north Georgia? — has 1800 page views. And counting.

Sure, Iâ€d love to believe that large numbers of Maya, faced with a collapsing civilization about 900 AD, traveled north, eventually going through current day Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to find the home they were looking for in north Georgia, but whatâ€s the evidence?

As I note in my post, the archeologist cited in the Examiner.com piece, Mark Williams, says that the Kenimer Mound shows no evidence of Maya. And the piece strings together suppositions and facts in bizarre ways.

Note this sentence explaining why the Kenimer mound archeologist missed the Maya connection: “Williams is a highly respected specialist in Southeastern archaeology so there was a Maya connection that he did not know about.” Huh?

And what about the source?

Didnâ€t any of the sites that are reposting the information as gospel take a look at the fact that Examiner.com is not any sort of ordinary news source and that anyone can apply to be an “examiner” for the site?

We may want to believe, but we cheapen our public discourse with such uncritical acceptance of spurious claims.

Altie is the subject of a fun and well-written cover story in Creative Loafing Atlanta: Stalking Georgia’s Loch Ness Monster, Altamaha-Ha. Writer Curt Holman takes us on an entertaining tour of the creature’s history:

The Altamaha-ha, known more casually as “Altie,” defies scientific explanation. Even before European settlement, the Tama tribes people told stories of a giant, snake-like river animal that hissed and bellowed. Over the past century, fishermen, lumberjacks and boy scouts have reported sightings of a creature in the tributaries and marshes of the Altamaha River, which feeds one of the largest river basins on the Atlantic Coast. The eyewitness consensus holds that the Altamaha-ha has a dark, smooth hide, apart from the tire-tread-like ridges on its back, as well as a narrow neck, prominent snout and flat, porpoise-like tail.

Could it be a sturgeon on steroids? A throwback to marine reptiles like the toothy plesiosaur? Maybe the Loch Ness Monster’s cousin from across the pond? I’m skeptical about cryptids, the kind of famous beings like Bigfoot unrecognized by the scientific establishment, but the Altamaha-ha called me with a siren song, despite the likelihood of a search turning into a snipe hunt. But even if the Altamaha-ha isn’t real, it could still have significance.

There’s this completely unhelpful but provocative cell phone video:

And here’s part one (7 mins.) of a documentary on YouTube:

Cryptozoology.com describes the creature as having various features similar to dolphins, alligators, and eels.

If you’ve had any Altamaha-ha encounters, let me know.

“Study” being a pretty loose word here, since, in the absences of physical specimens, it’s pretty hard to study an animal’s ecology.

Here’s the latest alleged bigfoot video, which was allegedly shot by hikers near the Spokane River. The dark figure moves across the top of the frame, supposedly unseen by the three hikers:

I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by cryptids like the sasquatch, the yeti, Nessie, and others. But every so often I check out sites like Cryptozoology.com to see what strange things we might be sharing the planet with — as if the known creatures aren’t strange enough.