Fossils are fascinating things. They’re impressions, that have been left behind by ancient prehistoric creatures and civilizations, to give us a glimpse into what life used to be like on Earth and what inhabited it. In most cases, scientists can decipher what a fossil has to say and make an educated guess on what it means on the grand scale of things. But not every fossil is so easily classified.
Sometimes, we come across something we don’t understand. Whether it’s technology that shouldn’t have existed or evidence of life outside of this planet, some fossils raise more questions than answers.
And they might prove that we’re not alone out there.
ALH84001 – Martian Bacterial Fossil
Since we started looking towards the stars, the terms ‘Aliens’ and ‘Martians’ have been interchangeable. Since it’s one of the closest, non-gas planets to us, we figured, if anyone was going to come first, it’d be from our neighbour. A lot of early sci-fi depends on this idea, and even some sketchy scientists have claimed to have found proof in odd rock formations and camera glitches. But they might not be far off, and the proof might be in a meteorite called ALH84001.
This guy fell to Earth in 1984, and it seemed like a normal meteor sample until they started testing it. It didn’t come from the far reaches of the galaxy, but from Mars, and it was over 4.1 Billion years old. Getting blown off the planet in some sort of collision, it found its way here and it wasn’t alone. On the surface, there were traces of fossilized bacteria on the surface.
Now there’s some debate between scientists on the exact nature of what they’ve found. Some say it could be just a random assortment of mineral structures that looklike bacteria, while others claim that this is evidence of panspermia, where meteors and astroids are launched from planets and landing on others, spreading life and fossils. In any case, in the 30 years since, there’s no definitive explanation or understanding of what this Martian bacteriological fossil is and and what it means for life in the universe.
Thankfully, there’s no way to reanimate the bacteria. I’ve seen way to many movies that start off with that and end up in a bad way.
Homo Naledi
Since we started finding early hominid (human-ish) fossils, most researchers figured that we’d find a nice and simple line of evolution from our ancestors, so that you can lay out all the skeletons and see how we’ve changed over the millennia. Most of these fossils were found in small geographic areas, and that’s the only place where they’d look. Except in 2015, they found a series of skeletons that were early hominids that didn’t relate to any of the known hominid fossil families. Called Homo Naledi, it’s an outlier of human evolution that defies explanation.
These fossils sit in a weird place in our family tree, falling somewhere between hominids and apes, both in structure and behaviour. This led researchers to classify them as an evolutionary middle child; a man-ape, if you will. The specimen that they found was less than a million years old, making it alive right before <Homo Sapiens appeared, but they looked more like older generations of humans. That’s like Neanderthals showing up in a remote corner of the world, still doing caveman things.
The more they analyzed the fossils the more mysteries appeared. They were buried in a large burial hole, but without any ritual, which is odd for a hominid species. But given that they lived up until Homo Sapiens appeared, odds are great that they encountered these small brained early humans, and probably took care of their slow-witted ancestors. But no one knows for sure, unless you’ve got a time machine handy.
Tully Monster
Discovered in 1955 by fossil collector Francis Tully, this creature defied explanation. While palaeontologists tried to place it within existing classifications, they can’t quite figure out where it belongs.
When you look at a reproduction, you can see why it’s so messed up. The main part of the body was like a cuttlefish, and it had no bones but could keep a rigid shape. It’s eyes were set like a hammerhead shark, on two eye pods and then it had a long segmented arm with a claw/toothy proboscis at the end, coming out of its head. It was like a drunk child’s fantasy doodle.
Over the years, scientists have tried to classify it in some way, but they couldn’t figure out where it fit in. It wasn’t really a worm or a mollusk or even something related to a squid; it was it’s own thing. Some time later, some samples showed up that had a spinal cord, so they could at least classify it as an early vertebrate, but that’s it. Until more info is discovered, it’s a mystery nope fish, that hopefully doesn’t have any modern equivalent.
Dinosaur fossils found in the frozen Arctic
When we think of the Earth, thousands of years ago, we picture a tropical climate with lush trees and plenty of sunshine. It sounds like a paradise, except for the giant man-eating lizards. Since most fossils are found in these types of climates, and what we know about the Earth before all the dinosaurs died out, it makes sense that we picture them in that way. Recently, however, scientists have found a new species of dinosaur that lived in the cold, frozen north of Alaska. Huh.
Given the name Ugrunaaluk Kuukpikensis, these duck-billed dinosaurs are a complete mystery. Generally, dinosaurs were considered cold-blooded, so they had no way regulate their heat. But to live in polar climates, means they needed to create their own heat, or possibly be furred. As well, they were herbivores, and the last time I checked, there weren’t a lot of plants in the Arctic. So what did they eat? Where did they live?
Something pushed them so far north, away from their contemporaries, and palaeontologists are baffled as to what. With evidence of juveniles and nests, it wasn’t just a migration, but they actually lived there year round. Looks like the arctic snow has more mysteries for us to uncover about the past.
Klerksdorp Spheres
Discovered in Ottosdal, Africa during mineral deposit excavations, these spheres are a baffling mystery. Somehow, perfect spheres, with grooves have been generated from the earth, made up of a hard mixture of metals. When geologists and scientists analyzed the spheres, they found that the grooves were carved back in 3 Million BC, which led some to consider ancient aliens or advanced prehistoric civilizations. Rumours started, claiming the NASA declared them too perfect for a natural process and that they were perfectly balanced and only zero-gravity environments could create such an object. So yeah, aliens exist.
Except, some say no. NASA apparently never took a look at these artifacts, and geologists claim that it’s possible that a natural, volcanic activity, combined with certain malleable metals, that resulted in their creation (unless NASA told them to say that). What it boils down to, however, is that neither side has a definitive answer for where they came from, how the grooves happened and what they mean. Certainly, aliens didn’t come all this way, to litter round spheres all over South Africa, unless it’s a giant space cat, and Earth is it’s litter box. Then I’m scared.
Godzillus
Sometimes, the most mysterious fossils are found by amateur explorers and palaeontologists, which makes the finds all that much more exciting. Recently, amateur fossil finder Ron Fine found this unique fossil in Covington, Kentucky. What he found was various chunks of fossil with plant-like patterns on it, and the more he dug, the more he found. When they’d uncovered all of it, what they had was a giant, elliptically-shaped, seven-foot-long, multi-lobed thing.
Official scientists dated it back to a time 450 Million years ago, when the area was underwater. That being said, they suspect it was some sort of sea creature, but it’s something they’d never seen before. With all the lobes, layers and oblong surfaces, it looked like a flattened cactus, and standing up, it would have been about nine feet tall (which is why they called it Godzillus). It also would have had arms or branches radiating from each side.
To date (as it’s a fossil and not actual biological material), they don’t know if it was a plant or a soft-bodied animal. If it’s the latter, then that means once upon a time there were nine-foot-long, slug giants that patrolled the oceans. Of course, it might just have been a big cluster of algae, but where’s the fun in that.
Giant sea slugs all the way.
Homo Floresiensis
Turns out, the more we go digging, the more early humans we find that defy classification. An Australian-Indonesian team discovered the bones of a small hominid in 2003, and it totally threw what we knew about human evolution out the window. Much like Homo Naledi, Homo Floresiensis is an anomaly because of its size. It was only 3 feet tall, which makes you wonder if Tolkien got his inspiration for Hobbits from our history.
So far, the fossils have only been found on one island in Indonesia, and the lived a short time ago, precisely 18,000 years ago. While the rest of us Homo Sapiens were building communities, these Hobbit-like humans were keeping to themselves on their island, like a lost tribe. But the question remains; where did they come from?
The general consensus is that Homo Sapiens were the only hominids on the planet at the time, but this, as well as other finds, have disproved that theory. These two types of hominids could have co-existed, yet there’s been no evidence of that yet. Others believe that these were Sapiens that migrated and settled on that remote island and through inbreeding, developed dwarfism, but the characteristics of their diminutive stature are different from contemporary cases of dwarfism, and on such a large scale, it seems unlikely.
So Hobbits it is. Just keep an eye out for that gold ring, it makes fools of us all.
Chandra Wickramasinghe’s meteorite fossils
There’s a reason why this fossil is named after a dude and not given some sort of alphanumeric classification – that’s because no one is 100% where it came from. Instead of coming from the ground, this fossil came from the skies. Back on Dec 29, 2012, a meteorite was discovered in Sri Lanka. Some say it came from the sky, but the International Meteorite Society didn’t record any impact, and there were no other signs. The meteorite was just… there. Fringe scientists began analyzing it anyways, and discovered that this meteorite was in excellent shape and more so, it had signs of fossilized life.
Discovered by Chandra Wickramasinghe, the director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology in the U.K., the meteorite has samples of a diatom, which is a microscopic phytoplankton that scientists use to monitor environmental conditions from the past. As they preserve very well, they’re a great indication of history. These simple cells record a lot of information and when they were analyzed, Wickramasinghe and his team published a paper verifying that these microscopic creature had a similar evolutionary history to diatoms on earth. This means that either the meteorite is from here (which is kinda not news anymore), or out in outer space, life has taken a similar path to ours, which means there might be human-like beings in our galaxy.
Other scientists have been quick to throw out that claim, or that the rock was from here, then was blasted out into space only to come back millions of years later, but again, no one knows anything for sure.
From here though, it looks like someone sent out some space seeds and gotten another planet pregnant.
Conrad’s Skull
If you jump into your time machine and go back 360 Million years, to the Carboniferous Era, you’ll find a world covered in swamps and carbon. Life was still evolving to what it is now, with fish and plants looking very similar to what they are now. What you won’t find, however, is humans. Or at least, that’s what we thought. Ed Conrad changed all that.
On an expedition to Java in 1981, Conrad found a skull imbedded in an area of prehistoric coal that dated back to the Carboniferous Era. The skull had the same features as a normal human skull, but it couldn’t have been from that era. All the data we have to date, suggests that humans have one been around for 4.5 Million years. So what gives?
After doing more research, the skull was pretty much determined to be human and coming from 280 Million years ago. Of course, mainstream science won’t admit to it, because they maintain that there were no humanoids back then, and no one wants to admit they were wrong. The skull was re-analyzed in 2011, as tests became more advanced, and it was further determined that it was indeed human.
So either there’s a time traveller out there who was really good at covering his tracks, or Darwin was wrong in dating human life and now there’s a huge cover up on how old we really are. Or, it could also be that sometimes, carbon dating is unreliable.
UC Riverside’s mysterious circles
Unsolved fossil mysteries are found everywhere, even when you don’t expect them. Back in 1986, scientists at the University of California-Riverside found a mysterious rock in Wisconsin, that dated back to when the state was covered in water. The rock had some mysterious circles on it, that were perfectly circular and raised. What’s even more crazy is that nature can get close, but nothing natural is ever a perfect circle.
The fossil was left as an unsolved mystery until 2015, when stumped scientists opened up the theorizing to Reddit. What the internet came back with was some sarcastic and far-fetched ideas (aliens) to some shockingly well thought out ones such as prehistoric snails, sea sponges or jellyfish made those shapes. In any case, while opening it up to social media added some interesting intellectual avenues of pursuit, none of the theories were a right fit. So it remains a mystery.
Something or someone was making perfect circles on the Wisconsin seafloor 450 million years ago.
The Nampa Stone Doll
When you think of Idaho, you don’t really think it’s going to be the centre of a fossil mystery, do you? But it was. Back in 1889 workers were digging a well in Nampa, Idaho, just outside of Boise, and they could a mysterious stone figure. Buried 320 feet below the earth, it resembled a human doll, made of stone.
The rock was dated and it came back to being 2 Million years old, long before any humans were recorded in Idaho, and this was millions of years before Homo Sapiens walked the earth at all. In fact, even if they were able to do something of this quality of workmanship, it would only have been 200,000 years ago. And maybe, you’re thinking that perhaps the stone was that old, and the figure was carved more recently, but no, it’s that old. With the intricate design and workmanship, this was done by a true artist; someone that shouldn’t have existed in that time.
To date, the doll remains unexplained. Is it a hoax? Probably not. Is it evidence of aliens or advanced civilizations? Maybe, but Idaho, why there? We might never know.
The Nevada Giants
Sounds like this should have been the name of the new NHL team, but alas, it’s just a legend that might have turned out to be true. According to the Paiute Indians, there was a race called the Si-Te-Cah who were red-haired giants that lived on the land before the natives got there. According to their oral tradition, all the natives got together in a united army and defeated the giants and kicked them out.
Early settlers didn’t believe these lends until 1911, when miners discovered Lovelock Cave. Inside, while they were digging, the found hundreds of ancient artifacts and fossilized bones that looked like they came from people 10 feet tall. As more scientists and researchers came to the cave, they discovered handprints that were far too large for a human handprint. They also found evidence of injuries consistent with a battle conducted with clubs and arrows.
As well, the most interesting part were the skulls. Each skull had an oddly shaped jaw bone and brow ridge, proving that there was a mysterious branch of hominids in the caves, that were larger than life.
Turns out the legends were true. There were giants in those caves, and the fact that they appear to be physiologically built for battle, makes us wonder if there was some other-worldly intervention into an alien fight club.
H/T Grunge
