Fact Check

Is This a Photograph of 'Turtle Mountain'?

If you love reptiles, don't hightail it to this mountain just yet.

Published Jan. 28, 2019

 (Shutterstock)
Image Via Shutterstock
Claim:
A photograph shows a mountain resembling a turtle.

On 19 January 2019, the "Amazing Nature" Facebook page shared an image that supposedly showed a mountain resembling a turtle:

This is not a genuine photograph of a real-world location. It is a digital artwork comprising altered versions of at least two different photographs.

The base of the "turtle mountain" image, including the landscape in the foreground, the lake, and the mountains in the background, came from a photograph of Wild Goose Island in Glacier National Park taken by Jacob Frank, National Park Service ranger and photographer, in 2015:

The "Turtle Mountain" portion of this digital artwork was based n a photograph of Pilot Mountain in North Carolina:

We created this collage to better show how these images match up. The "Turtle Mountain" digital artwork is on the left side, the image of Pilot Mountain is on the top right, and a cropped version of the Wild Goose Island image can be seen on the bottom right:

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.