Authorities call the apparent hoax reprehensible, but even with just five feet.
In fact, the first scientists to examine a specimen believed they were the victims of a hoax.
Some posters on Chinese bulletin boards and blogs have argued that Mr Zhou was perhaps merely a hapless tool in a hoax perpetrated mainly by bureaucrats.
Police weren't sure what to make of the case, whether it was a hoax or a mistake, but what convinced them to take the case seriously was the eyewitness account of Falcon's brother Brad.
think it’s a hoax, ” she told me.
The hundreds of calls the BBC received proved how successful the hoax was.
Even so, this and one or two other trivial mistakes were presented by some as further proof that scientists cannot be trusted and that warming is a hoax.
If it is a hoax, it's incredibly convincing, given how fluidly the text was written and the fact that statistical analysis has revealed patterns similar to those found in natural languages.
They considered the phone call a hoax.
However, it would appear that it may have been accidental disinformation rather than a hoax per se.
I never thought my hoax would go so far and I felt awful when some of you got so excited about knowing the title.
I wish this was a hoax.
Poor messaging isn't the only possible cause for the increase in denial: politicians - mostly on the right - have aggressively pushed the climate-change-is-a-hoax trope.
All hoax viruses are essentially chain letters.
While Noah's ark found in Turkey would bolster Bible literalists, an American ark-hunter says the latest discovery could be a hoax.
The ombudsman's office said the authorities at first thought they were dealing with a hoax.
Mainstream critics argue that the entire affair is a hoax.
Many prominent British scientists deemed it a hoax when presented with a sketch and pelt, in 1798.
It's an obvious hoax.
The Atlantic's editors published a series based on supposedly rediscovered love letters between Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, only to realize over time that they had fallen victim to an elaborate hoax.