Aldo Solano Rojas and I are gazing into the face of a concrete crocodile.

It has seen better days that poor things.

Now it's green, green, blueish, it used to be more green.

Or actually we're looking at where part of its face should be but has fallen off.

What's sad is that it's really, really bad condition.

Aldo takes out his phone and pulls up a photo taken of the crocodile decades ago.

At the height of its glory, before it lost the majority of its nose.

That was...

Yeah, I'll be right back.

No!

You want to go see the lion?

Yes.

In this park, the crocodile is part of a concrete crew.

A few strides away, there's a tuskless yellow elephant, a pouting fish, even a bear.

Well, this bear has almost just one ear, no face, and no hands.

I'm sorry, I should have brought you to another park.

Parks across Mexico City, and actually across all of Mexico, are full of these concrete creatures.

And today we'll trace the story of how they landed here at such scale.

I'm Abby Peralt, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible

and wondrous places.

When we come back, an introduction to the long, unknown creator behind the widely known

concrete fauna of Mexico's urban placecapes.

...