Morten St George Theory

[Koen G]

It doesn't have to be a pangolin, but the pangolin is superior in explanatory power to the armadillo. It's simply a better hypothesis since fewer unknowns have to be introduced.

We know the Eurasian continent was extensively interconnected via trade routes.
We know the pangolin is covered in huge scales while the armadillo isn't.

There are no such advantages of the armadillo over the pangolin. So a pangolin hypothesis trumps an armadillo hypothesis.

But the pangolin is just a simple, quick way to show the fault in Tucker's reasoning. That does not mean JKP or myself claim the animal must be a pangolin. In an earlier post here I showed images of imaginary scaled marine mammals from medieval nature books. They have a greater explanatory power than the pangolin still:

We know that they were known to 15th century Europeans.
We know they were depicted with a fish tail, just like the VM critter is.
We know they were depicted without sharp, long claws, a feature which both the armadillo and the pangolin have but the VM critter lacks.

This means that "mythical marine mammal" is a more solid hypothesis than both pangolin and armadillo.