Local Man Catches a Pre-Historic Monster in The Monongahela River

It's been a popular meme since the start of the quarantine. The world is healing. Humans are stuck at home, and animals are back in a big way to inhabit the places we left behind.

This trend couldn't have been more obvious when a local man known as "Matty Ice" fished what appears to be a dinosaur out of the Mon River "down by southside". According to Ice's recollection of the events on Facebook:

"[I] was fishing for flathead catfish and it got snagged in my line, they eat plankton the one way to catch them is to file hook them or have them get caught in ur line".

There's plenty of speculators on social media claiming that the fish is indeed a Paddlefish (not to be confused with an Oarfish).

Here's what the unfortunate face of a paddlefish looks like up close. Pretty stupid looking.

The earliest fossil records of these bad boys dates back to 125 million years ago, and they're only found in North America and China although the Chinese version is reported to have gone extinct in 2019.

I find it pretty convenient that China reported them extinct last year, and now they're turning up in our rivers at the same time as the Wuhan Flu – could there be a deeper connection?

Meanwhile Matty Ice is a local legend that should be representing Pittsburgh on the next season of River Monsters. Check out this massive catfish he bagged.

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