20 Most Mysterious Discoveries Scientists Can't Explain

fossils are key to helping us understand how the world used to be and in turn get a better grasp on why our planet is the way it is now while some are no more than a stray bone others are truly awesome and when we find them a brand new piece of history sometimes fascinating but other times horrifying is unlocked from a fossil found giving birth to the nearly perfectly preserved remains of a 15-ton dinosaur check out these incredible fossil finds if we were to tell you a flea had been found fossilized in amber you'd probably think well that's all well and good but it's hardly awesome or interesting and accuse us of clickbait but you need to make like a lead character in Icarus and hold your horses because this is no ordinary flea it carries an ancestor of the pathogen that caused the Black Plague no more formally as your senior pestis this is the devastating plague that wiped out 1/3 of Europe's population like nobody's business droplets of the bacteria were found in the fleas rectum and proboscis which is the sciency way of saying sucking a mouth part dr. George Bernard junior an entomology researcher said in this fossil the presence of similar bacteria in a dried droplet on the proboscis of the flea is consistent with a method of transmission of plague bacteria by modern fleas it's terrifying to think that what we have here frozen in time is a flea just about to spread the bubonic plague who knows what magnitude of suffering it was moments away from causing but while what we have with this fossil is evidence of something that was mere moments away from taking life the next remarkable fossil shows something that was mere moments away from giving life these eel-like dinos were the smallest known genus of the basal akiaki Rydia these underwater beasts had an estimated length of one to two feet and a weight of 22 pounds when this fossil was found it dumbfounded paleontologists the world over as it predated the oldest known fossil of a marine reptile by 10 million years it's shattered preconceptions of how old casares were and it wasn't just the age that was curious it was the activity the fossil was in the midst of the chaos ours had been fossilized middle labor there was one baby inside the mother and a second baby stuck in her pelvis this was a key discovery as experts had previously believed chaos auras and other accessories gia gave birth in the water but the offspring of this fossil was emerging headfirst confirming ksr's would come to land to give birth and it's not the only fossil found to be in an unlikely spot weighing 15 pounds and coming in at 3 foot 3 inches tall the Heracles in expect Tanis was a species of parrot from New Zealand that was the size of an average human toddler they are believed to have been incapable of flight though more than made up for it with a seriously robust beak that some scientists believe was strong enough to enable the Heracles in expect anis to climb trees by pecking their way up their formidable Nature has seen them develop a nickname squawk Zilla while we have known for a long time that gigantis ism affected birds in this part of the world squawk Zilla is a relatively recent discovery and the biggest known parrot discovered today the fossilized remains of this feathered behemoth were found of all places at the bottom of a lake it seems the parrot had to quote John Cleese ceased to be and promptly fell out of the sky and sank into the waters below as remarkable as this fossil was all scientists and researchers had to work with was bone as is the case with most fossils but on March 21st 2011 a game-changing notice or fossil was found strapped in its fact o'clock this family of ankylosaurus dinosaur roamed our planet from the Late Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous period these beasts really got around and are thought to have roamed the areas we now know as Africa Asia Antarctica Canada Europe North America they were armored dinosaurs that were heavily built and had a mace like tail and were covered in sheaves and spikes protruding out of their shoulders they were a meaty 18 feet in length and weighed almost 3,000 pounds despite this battle-worthy aesthetic they were actually herbivores so why was a notice our fossil so game-changing the answer is simple it remains the best preserved fossil of its type ever found it was perfectly petrified from the snout to the 20 inch long shoulder spikes to the hips this also looks exactly how the live notice our would have looked it is the perfect fossil a paleontologists dream discovery though if you can't find the perfect fossil finding a big one is still pretty good and fossils don't come much bigger than elasmosaurus its name may make it sound like mr. fantastics personal pet but the elasmosaurus a genus of plasia sore that at 34 feet long and weighing several tons easily dominated the Seas during its day eighty point five million years ago the elasmosaurus had an extremely streamlined body like Stephen Merchant with paddle like limbs a long neck stubby tail and small head when a 15-ton elasmosaurus fossil was found in Antarctica it became a key piece of evidence toward the theory that an incredibly vibrant marine ecosystem existed right up to the moments before dinosaurs looked up at the sky and said gee whiz that asteroid looks close it took a long time for this fossil to find its way to us it was first spotted by Williams ins meister of Purdue University on Seymour Island during an expedition in 1989 at the time he lacked the resources to excavate the fossil but he told Argentinian researchers of his find they tried their best to uncover the elasmosaurus skeleton but logistics and poor weather conditions slow the process down to a snail's pace yet they remained determined digging was only possible in the first two months of the year and sometimes not at all but eventually by 2017 the excavation was finally complete and it was worth it the process had yielded a substantial chunk of the animal skeleton pretty much everything except the skull he was a colossal fine decades in the making though a fossil doesn't always have to be big to be of importance or intrigue to mere teeth that were found in the South of England have proven to be hugely vital in understanding the history of our own species at 145 million years old they are some of the oldest known fossils of eutherian mammals the very animal group that includes elephants dogs and even you and I presuming you're a human following an extensive study experts have come to the conclusion that the teeth probably belonged to nocturnal creatures that would sneak out at night and eat insects a common strategy for avoiding the dinosaurs that would have dominated the land at the time each tooth is actually from a different animal both similar to shrews a distal dog and a distal theorem respectively a newly discovered fossil was found of a smaller relative of modern crocodiles and alligators and is thought to have lived 96 million years ago based on the newly found fossils we think they were about three to six feet long which is pretty compact for a crocodile form it's only a tiny bit bigger than a dwarf crocodile the smallest living croc but the unique thing about this croc is its jaw the nature of its right lower jaw implies it had fewer teeth than modern Gators and said teeth probably came in at all sorts of interesting shapes this implies it would often chew on absurdly hard foods pretty much confirming the skull amassed acts as a carnivore probably one that would ambush its poor prey near water's edge the fossil was found in Woodbine formation of eastern Texas which is something of a goldmine for crocodile form fossils in fact every time you blink the remnants of a species long gone is unearthed fear but not all ancient animals were scaly the recently discovered Ventana sir TG was a mammal with a groundhog like vibe dating back to approximately 66 million years ago when this fossil was discovered in 2010 researchers were baffled by the peculiar critter all that was found was ask all but that was enough for scientists to get to work from there they deduced that this ancient animals features were so strange that they could never have predicted its existence the animal skull was huge measuring just over three inches long twice the size of the previously largest known a million skull from the entire age of the dinosaurs based on the shapes of its skull we can determine that this fluffy little thing had an extraordinary gifted sense of smell and hearing possibly better than any living animal this next fossil find takes us back to the oceans if Minnie Opena menses was a dolphin like cetacean that lived in pana from the late miocene epoch we have determined this based on the fossils that were found in the chakras formation in 2015 these remains including half a skull an entire set of teeth and a right shoulder blade yes we said shoulder blade have revealed to us that the is mini Opena menses was almost 10 feet long and would have stocked our water six million years ago in modern times there are sadly only five species of river dolphin left but fossils such as this one showed that in years gone by there were many more and they were further widespread across the globe these mini a panda mantis fossil in particular is helping paleontologists understand something that had previously puzzled them when in the evolution of river dolphins did they transition from saltwater to freshwater of all fossilized ancient river dolphins this is the closest to modern species offering key insights into their evolutionary tract and back in 2009 we were thrown a curveball in understanding our own evolution when Ethiopian fossils of the oldest known hominid skeleton were found previously the oldest almost complete skeleton of a human ancestor was a disgustingly modern 3.2 million year old Australopithecus afarensis affectionately nicknamed Lucy she had a lot in common with modern humans making her unhelpful and painting pictures of the true links between Apes and humans but at 4.4 million years old this new fossil made Lucy look like a spring chicken named Ardipithecus ramidus or RT the bones revealed that humans might not have evolved from ancient monkeys as had long been believed this fossil helped us understand that early phases of humans actually evolved along a separate lineage from the last common ancestor shared by early hominids and extinct Apes like us I'm assuming you're human again already walked upright without using her arms unlike chimpanzees though they retained a huge big toe to enable a plank tree grasping we all know the story of the Trojan horse the tale of how men snuck themselves into the city of Tenaya by hiding themselves inside a giant wooden horse but where exactly is Tenaya anyway where is this city of people dumb enough to think of a giant wooden horse like a normal present it's actually been long gone to the point that some thought it was nothing but a myth and ever since the most Orwellian of years 1984 archeologists have been trying to hunt down any remnants of it's supposed existence the quest began when archaeologist Elena Korca discovered a buried sarcophagus in a village located in the Peloponnese region which is just south of Athens she knew there had to be more to this discovery and wanted to get digging in the same area again as soon as she could but that return visit didn't take place until 2013 when cuca arrived with an army sized research team to start a long-term excavation project things finally heated up in 2018 when they unearthed chilling tombs stocked with bronze gold silver vases and of course bones but this was only the beginning from here the dig headed north where Korca and her archaeologists stumbled upon the remains of buildings from an ancient city within an area of 672 meters square they dug up buried columns floors and walls and soon realized the tombs they had found was the graveyard of Tenaya and now they had found the rest of the city until this point Tenaya existed only in myths and historical texts there was no evidence to suggest it actually ever existed archaeologists have found in a grave in southeastern Bulgaria is a 1800 jar shaped like the head of a boxer or wrestler although if you want to get technical it is actually a Basel Merriam which is a very specific type of jar used to store liquids like perfumes of balms the jar is a creepy and curious piece with experts mystified as to what it's supposed to be made of brass it seems to depict a man with a goatee and bent nose the facial injury is what led many experts to think it is a depiction of a boxer one who is yet to heal from a recent injury but others theorized that the goatee has a demonic feel a vibe aided by the fact a man that jar immortalizes seems to be wearing a hat made of a deceased cat but then again maybe that's just what boxers in those days wore even though we can't imagine Muhammad Ali wearing a stuffed Garfield on his head when an 8-year old Swedish American girl was playing in her local lake she stumbled upon something her father initially mistook for nothing but a stick however both he and his daughter would soon realize it was something significantly more curious than that and they had no idea how it had got there there at the bottom of the Vito Stern lake in tunnel smullin young sega vennett check found a very real sore sadly pulling a sword out of the water didn't grant her dominion over a kingdom like arthur once her father realized she was wielding something far more dangerous than an average lump of wood he quickly took it from her hands and reported it to the authorities but how did it get there they swiftly realized this wasn't exactly a modern blade that had been recently dumped this was something far older donated to a local museum staff member mchao moored strim was quick to estimate that the blade may date all the way back to the 5th and 6th century AD making it pre Viking Age historians and archaeologists the world over were immediately fascinated with this once water-dwelling curiosity these sorts of projects take time which is something medieval archeology expert Amit Ram needed when trying to decipher the true meaning of the graffiti stone Israeli researchers and Greek workers discovered something incredibly mysterious that has been hiding in plain sight for hundreds of years in a shadowy corner of Jerusalem's very own church of the hole except poker there has long set of Blackrock roughly the size of the average dining room table for years this two-ton block has been affectionately known as the graffiti stone because tourists have a tendency to scribble their own unique carvings into it in 2017 a Greek team of architects and engineers were working on restoring the integrity of the church as it had been long in danger of collapse and in doing so used a crane to move the mysterious graffiti stone the first time it had shifted in centuries as it was being moved Amit Ram of the Israeli antiques Authority who had been tasked with monitoring the renovation noticed particular intricate circular carvings in the limestone that had been previously shielded from view there was no way a tourist had carved these strange circular patterns their origin was all the more mysterious Ram was quick to lock himself away in a library and research desperately hunting for evidence of other stones with similar decorations after significant work he found that the geometric patterns on the stone matched his style popular in Rome in the 12th century the design on the stone was used to symbolize both temporal and spiritual power by the papacy suggesting that it was no mere slab of rock and actually an ancient altar of significant spiritual value in his studying ray M has come to the conclusion that it was used for mass until sudden fire consumed the church in around about 1808 the catastrophe destroyed the building and in the rebuild the altar wound up buried under a new floor archaeologists in 1969 began excavating and found the stone later leaving it to the side where it's at for decades presumed to be unimportant a September 2018 article for history.com revealed that the largest-ever survey of a region from the Maya civilization revealed 60,000 structures in northern Guatemala that had previously been a secret the structures include everything from houses to canals to farms completely subverting the previously established assumption that this area was sparsely populated instead there was an entire population up and running as revealed by the plethora crumbled Billings found buried beneath the dirt for some discovering an entire city is truly the holy grail of archeology and here it is others however would consider something more theologically themed the holy grail of archaeology Israel is something of a treasure trove when it comes to mysteries discoveries and some of those are intriguing ancient art archeologists from the University of Haifa stumbled upon a 1500 year old painting in the ruins of a farming village from the Byzantine era in southern Israel Negev desert it is a simplistic doodle like something a child might do that you might put onto a fridge but art historian Emma Mayen phone are is convinced it is an artistic recreation of Jesus at his baptism looking down at us you would be forgiven for saying that it doesn't look all that much like the Son of God but here's the curious thing the Gospels never actually described Jesus's appearance every image of him is based on later artistic versions in earlier centuries Jesus was actually depicted in a number of different ways before the classic images of the long hair and beard became the norm in the 6th century this wall picture depicts a pre sixth century idea of Jesus with a clean-shaven face and short curly hair as opposed to long flowing locks if the image is what my infinera thinks it is it's a significant piece of history the man and Jesus Christ depicted as he truly was and it's not just elements of Christian stories the archaeologists unearthed as an ancient Mesoamerican city and the site of many of the most architectural II significant to Mesoamerican pyramids to have been in the pre-columbian era of the Americas fail to akan is already steeped in wonder and intrigue and is exactly the sort of place where you would expect to find such an ancient altar home of the incredibly complex and iconic structure the pyramid of the moon-- you would think that the city had thrown everything it had to offer at us but in 2018 archeologists discovered Teotihuacan had yet more secrets when they confirm the existence of a hidden tunnel in the city that had remained unknown for centuries but why did the tunnel exist what purpose did it serve the tunnel leads to a previously unaccessible deep underneath the aforementioned lunar pyramid the purpose of the creepy room is unclear but the more they have studied it the more researchers have come to believe the chamber was possibly used for funerals with the tunnel itself representing the route to the underworld this idea of marching the body of the deceased down a pathway designed to symbolize such a concept was common among the Maya Aztecs and many other pre-columbian societies safe passage to the other side is something that was sorely needed in the Western Roman city of Pompeii when nearly 2,000 years ago the deadly eruption of Mount Vesuvius unleashed a natural disaster unlike anything there had ever been before or since claiming the lives of as many as 30,000 people but as the lava flowed clouds of ash blanketed the city and in doing so preserved the paintings on the walls of a newly discovered room by keeping out all water and life in recent years archaeologists have found said room and in doing so have seen what was painted on those walls the mural in question is an epic shrine known as l'erario a name given to artworks that honor household spirits such shrines were a common feature of Roman households but most have fallen victim to the brutal touch of time or in the case of those in Pompeii then utterly destroyed but the natural preservation process triggered by the ash means the Laurium in this one home are as bold bright and vibrant as they were back in their day while Pompeii maybe lost a whole new city of some kind has been found when a broken piece of a human's upper jaw was found in Israel in late 2017 it totally dumbfounded experts until this discovery all fossil records had suggested that our species first appeared in East Africa around about 200,000 years ago this idea was completely subverted in June of 2017 when fossils found on the jebel in hoods site in Morocco looked to be about 350,000 years old significantly pushing back the potential early origins of Homo sapiens and rewriting what we knew about the history of our own species the Israeli upper jaw find the Moroccan discovery as studies show it is 180 thousand years old meaning Homo sapiens were also taking their early steps into Eurasia far earlier than we would have ever previously hypothesized it seems humans were exploring the world and potentially conquering it far quicker than we could have known and evidence of such conquering has turned up in the strangest of places we hope you enjoyed this video let us know which of these was your favorite in the comments and if you liked the video make sure to subscribe and turn on notifications so you'll be the first to know when a new video arrives thanks for watching

Channel: Interesting Facts

Views: 345,435

Rating: 4.6412354 out of 5

Keywords: find, finds, mysterious finds, discoveries, discovery, archaeological discoveries, recent discoveries, amazing discoveries, fossil, fossil finds, interesting facts, top 10, top 5, top10, top5, top, best, list, amazing stock mysterious finds, amazing stock discoveries, most amazing top 10, top 10 scary, science, unexplained, prehistoric

Id: HoDc98eITv0

Length: 22min 52sec (1372 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 24 2020