Coso Artifact
An object found in the Coso Mountains of California in 1961, with metal and ceramic parts embedded in stone. It caused a stir as "a spark plug from a 500,000-year-old rock," but it was later found to be a 1920s car spark plug.
Mystery Timeline｜1946–1988
Mysteries of the Postwar Showa
The UFO boom, the tsuchinoko and lake monster crazes, the Slit-Mouthed Woman, and other mysteries that captivated Japan from the postwar years to the end of the Showa era.
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1961 (found)
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1960s (collected)
Ica Stones
More than 10,000 engraved stones collected by the doctor Javier Cabrera in Ica, Peru. They show dinosaurs and humans together and surgery like heart transplants, and were hailed as "evidence of a super-ancient civilization." The farmer who sold the stones confessed that he carved them himself.
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1968 (found) / Cambrian period (rock)
Meister Print (Trilobite Footprint)
A fossil found in Utah in 1968 that looks like a sandal footprint stepping on a trilobite. Because it came from Cambrian rock about 500 million years old, it was hailed as evidence overturning human history, but it is thought to be a mark left by a natural break in the rock.
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1970s (boom in Japan)
OOPArts (Out-of-Place Artifacts)
Short for "out-of-place artifacts": objects said to be impossible to make with the technology of the time and place where they were found. The Antikythera mechanism and the crystal skulls are famous, but most have since been explained by research.
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1980s (found) / Cretaceous period (rock)
The Cretaceous "Finger" Fossil
A stone shaped just like a human fingertip, said to have been found in Texas in the 1980s. Claimed to come from Cretaceous rock about 100 million years old, it was presented as evidence that dinosaurs and humans coexisted. It has been pointed out that its joints do not match a human finger, and the prevailing view is that it is a stone with a chance resemblance.
