The red top earlier this month published “shock footage” of a “woolly mammoth” - thought to be extinct for thousands of years - lurching through icy waters in Siberia.

The footage, allegedly shot by a “government-employed engineer”, quickly garnered millions of views on YouTube and the story spread to news outlets and TV stations all over the world including CBS News, MSNBC, ABCNews and scores of publications in Britain.

The Sun’s claims included that the beast’s hair matched a sample recovered from mammoth remains.

The video was supplied by Australian “paranormal writer” Michael Cohen, who runs “inter-galactic daily news service” allnewsweb.com.The footage bears his name and that of a media distribution service, Barcroft Media.

The clip brought out the Loch Ness Monster and Big Foot believers who saw it as a mammoth proof of life that confirmed earlier reports from Japanese scientists that it might be possible to bring the mammoth to life using frozen DNA.

Others claimed it was a hoax, or just a video of an elephant or a bear with a fish in its mouth.

Two YouTube users, HOAXKiller1 and ModerateMartian, eventually got to the bottom of the mystery after finding the original footage, sans mammoth.

The footage was shot by Australian documentary filmmaker Lou Petho in the Sayan Mountains in Siberia last year. He filmed the video for a documentary he is making re-tracing his grandfather’s escape from a Siberian prisoner of war camp in 1915 by walking across Siberia to Budapest.

“I assume he [Cohen] has taken it or people that he deals with has taken my footage and through CGI created a mammoth crossing the river,” he said.

“They sold it to Barcroft Media saying look we’ve got this footage it’s genuine.”

Petho said he contacted Barcroft who were “appalled” to hear the footage was fake, offering a “financial arrangement” to settle the matter. Some of the news outlets contacted about the hoax by Petho corrected the record but he said many did not respond to him.

“If it was a couple of kids in their bedroom having fun I think it’d be fantastic, I think it’d be a good laugh, [but] what disturbs me is that it’s people who are stealing footage, creating a lie and treating the general public as fools ... and were making money out of it,” said Petho.

Material Cohen has published on his website and YouTube channel has been used to generate countless stories about UFOs, aliens and other strange phenomena.

This includes a recent story about a “dead alien” found in Russia, since revealed to be a hoax, and several stories about aliens captured in footage in Australia.

Previously, Cohen ran the website oneworldpsychics.com and it is understood he claimed to have psychic abilities.

In an email interview Cohen, from Sydney, said that as a paranormal writer and investigator he was sent videos of various purported phenomena “all the time”.

“I do due diligence to the best of my abilities. Needless to say many of these might well be hoaxes, however I feel I am being somewhat defamed and the entire notion of a paranormal investigator is being defamed,” he said.

Cohen said the story about the hoax video was a “media beatup” and that Petho was blowing it “way out of proportions”. He said he was entitled to use Petho’s video as it was uploaded on to YouTube and into the public domain.

“The field of paranormal research is nevertheless valid and if only ten per cent of such videos show real phenomena then the entire enterprise is justified,” he said.

“Journalists hostile to the notion that there is any spiritual or metaphysical aspect of our lives seek to discredit this type of thing and turn the average person into a soulless robot serving corporate interests devoid of any belief system or even mystery in their lives.

“Perhaps I should have been more careful, perhaps I wanted people to believe too much that something more is out there. I am sorry if I caused Lou any grief.”