In Northern California, a park ranger discovers a treasure trove of several million-year-old fossils.

In California, a treasure trove of fossils was discovered, including the fully preserved skeleton of a mastodon and the bones of a 400-pound monster salmon.’ Last summer, while walking through the Mokelumne River’s drainage in the Sierra mountains, forest ranger Greg Francek came across the fossil woods.

Since then, researchers have unearthed the remains of some 600 petrified trees and dozens of animal species, including an elephant ancestor and a giraffe-sized camel.

Experts said that the site — which dates back some around 10 million years ago to the Miocene epoch — is one of the most significant ever found in California.

For now, its exact location is being kept under wraps in order to protect the artefacts until they can be safely extracted from the ground for proper analysis.

The mastodon skull, meanwhile, is scheduled to go on display at the California State University, Chico’s Gateway Science Museum in the autumn of this year.

Mr Francek, who works for the East Bay Municipal Utility District, which provides drinking water for the local area, found the site by accident after discovering something that looked like wood but was smooth like stone.

‘I happened upon a petrified tree,’ Mr Francek told LiveScience.

‘This tree was partially encased in the burial sediments, and because one end was exposed, I could actually see the tree rings inside.’

Looking around, the ranger went on to discover more fossilised tree trunks.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later, however, when he returned to conduct an organised survey of the petrified forest that he first spotted the animal fossils among the plants.

‘I located the first vertebrate fossils,’ Mr Francek told SFGate.

‘What I didn’t comprehend at the time was the fact that I was looking at the bones of great beasts that had roamed this landscape millions of years ago.’ 

At this point, Mr Francek decided that he would reach out to specialist researchers, among whom were California State University, Chico palaeontologist and stratigrapher Russell Shapiro.

‘Few other fossil discoveries like this exist in California,’ Professor Shapiro told SFGate.

‘The discovery is highly significant because of both the sheer number and diversity of specimens found.

‘The bones paint a clearer picture of life 10 million years ago when animals evolved from living in forests to grassland as the landscape changed.’ 

According to the researchers, the site was once the location of an oak forest that was ringed by an ocean. Wood from the trees would have been buried in the fine-grained sediments of a delta, floodplain or volcanic ash bed, turning to stone over the course of millions of years.

The bones of the prehistoric creatures that the team found among the now-petrified forest would have been carried to the region by floods and volcanic debris flows coming from further inland, they explained. 

Professor Shapiro and his team reported being particularly surprised to have excavated the skull, teeth and tusks of an astonishingly well-preserved mastodon.

‘What you hope to find is a tip of a tusk,’ he told Chico State Today.

‘Not only do we have the tip, but we have the entire thing. And it’s just beautiful ivory. It’s mind-blowing.’ 

Researchers Just Found The Deepest Shipwreck On Earth Four Miles Below The Pacific

A US-based team has thoroughly mapped and filmed the world’s deepest recorded shipwreck, a World War II US Navy destroyer. In the Philippine Sea, the USS Johnston is at a depth of 21,180 feet (about 6,500 meters). While its existence has long been established, this is the first time a crew has been able to map and film the entire wreckage.

Caladan Oceanic, a US-based private company that focuses on ocean expeditions, gets credit for reaching the shipwreck on March 31. Its research vessel, the DSV Limiting Factor, was able to survey the wreck, which was more than 100 feet deeper than previously believed, sitting in the darkness more than four miles below the surface of the Pacific.

Caladan Oceanic’s founder is Victor Vescovo, a former US Navy commander who has a long-established passion for visiting some of the world’s most hard-to-get-to places. He holds the record for being the first person in history to have been to the top of all the world’s continents, both poles, and the bottom of all its oceans.

With the survey of the USS Johnston, Vescovo reached another milestone — completing the deepest shipwreck dive in history. He was at the controls of the Limiting Factor for the whole process, which took place in two eight-hour segments over two days.

Sunk during the Battle off Samar.

The USS Johnston was sunk by the Japanese navy on October 25, 1944, during the Battle off Samar. It was one of four naval battles which comprised the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the largest battles in the history of naval warfare and engagement that sounded the death knell of the Japanese navy in World War II, according to the US Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC).

Sam Cox, director of the NHHC, said the new images of the wreck of the Johnston help the Navy put the spotlight on the heroism and history of its crew.

The Johnston was captained by Cmdr. Ernest Evans, a Native American from Oklahoma. Along with two other US destroyers and four smaller destroyer escorts, Evans led the Johnston in attacking a far superior Japanese force of four battleships, six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and 11 destroyers, according to the NHHC account of the battle.

In an initial encounter, fire from the Johnston knocked out a Japanese cruiser, but the US destroyer was heavily damaged and its ammunition depleted. Evans himself was seriously wounded.

Undaunted, Evans regrouped his crew and the Johnston attacked the Japanese ships again, drawing their fire from a nearby US aircraft carrier.

After two-and-a-half hours of fighting, the Johnston was without power and surrounded by Japanese ships. Evans ordered the crew to abandon the ship, and it rolled over and sank.

Two of the three ships that followed the Johnston into the Japanese battle line were also sunk, said Carl Schuster, a former Navy captain and Hawaii Pacific University instructor.

“The discovery of the USS Johnston serves as yet another reminder of the heroism and sacrifice of that day in Leyte Gulf 77 years ago,” he said.

Of the Johnston’s crew of 327 men,186 died, including Evans. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the first Native American in the US Navy to be awarded his country’s highest military honour, according to the NHHC.

For Vescovo, being able to reach the USS Johnston was a very personal mission.

“In some ways, we have come full circle,” he said in a statement. “The Johnston and our own ship were built in the same shipyard, and both served in the US Navy. As a US Navy officer, I’m proud to have helped bring clarity and closure to the Johnston, its crew, and the families of those who fell there.”

Mysterious three-mile wide ‘star map dating back 150,0000 YEARS’ found in Hawaii

Perhaps you haven’t still scrolled through the internet for the latest videos of mind-blowing discoveries that have been posted by some of the content creators of some platforms. However, we’ve found something interesting and of course incredible for you today.

The official content creator of the channel “Third Phase of Moon,” Brett Cousins, said that he had never made discoveries by himself and published until he found some information across an insane discovery.

He has only published discoveries that had been reported worldwide until this incredible moment. Anyhow, this is considered the oldest petroglyphs that humanity has ever found.

He was the first to come across this incredible discovery through the usage of Google Earth. He had discovered it on an ancient celestial star map.

The dating is believed to be more than 150,000 years.

As per Brett Cousins, his novel discovery that he was able to find in Hawaii can help reveal the hidden secrets of the ancient civilizations if we sit back and put some effort into it.

Brett was able to drag the attention of more than 19,000 viewers on his YouTube channel since the release of this great finding. Among them were some of the greats too.

Brett has an idea that this star map as well as the astronomical site have a connection with the mysterious Nazca Lines.

American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse

Five granite slabs rise in a star formation on a desolate field in Georgia, United States. – one weighs more than 20 tons, and there is a capstone on top of them. Nobody knows who constructed them or why they were put there, but one common theory is that they are there to lead mankind during a post-apocalyptic event that will come in the not so distant future.

The huge blocks send a message out to the world in eight different current languages and four extinct ones (ancient Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphs for example). The set of ten guidelines has baffled people around the world, with descriptions ranging from perfect and utopian to satanic or quirky. But no matter what the case, these ten commandments should definitely get you thinking:

While some of them are clearly noble and laudable (like having fair laws and avoiding petty ones), some of them have stirred controversy — especially “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature”, and “Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity”. If we were to apply these now, we’d have to kill over 90% of the planet.

However, this is a perfect example of a misinterpretation, because it has to be kept in mind that these “commandments” have to be applied after the alleged apocalyptic event. It’s not clear why “they” settled on 500 million, but the bottom line is that even though we hate to admit it — the world is overpopulated right now; it’s way overpopulated.

We are indeed finding better and better ways to manage our resources and use sustainable or renewable forces, but in just the last 50 years, the population of the Earth has more than doubled, and if we keep this up, the prognosis is pretty dire indeed. But back to our Georgia Stones.

The construction of a post-apocalyptic monument

Whoever built them definitely knew what they were doing: the slabs stand proud and sturdy and will endure through the centuries with minimal damage.

They also have a remarkable set of other features. For example, they feature a built-in channel that indicates the celestial pole, a horizontal slot that shows the annual travel of the sun as well as a system that marks noontime throughout the year. But why they have these features and lack others that would apparently be more useful for dazed survivors is still a mystery.

It all started on a Friday in June 1979. An elegantly dressed grey-haired man showed up in Elbert County and introduced himself as R. C. Christian — a reference to Christian Rosenkreuz — or Christian Rose Cross in English, and said he represents a small group of loyal Americans.

Rosenkreuz is a legendary character that founded the Order of the Rose Cross. He quickly became one of the most important and mysterious figures of the time by blending Christianity with some Arab and Persian sages teachings. R. C. Christian admitted this is not his real name, but refused to reveal anything about his identity.

Joe Fendley, president of the company that specializes in granite construction, didn’t care too much about this — that is, until he found out what monument R. C. Christian had in mind.

He explained that it would be a compass, calendar, and clock and also be engraved with a set of “guides” written in 8 of the world’s languages.

Fendley believed he was dealing with a crazy man and wanted to get rid of him, so he explained that a large number of tools and machines would be required, but Christian just nodded. He then quoted a price several times greater than the real one, but again, Christian seemed indifferent, so Fendley sent him to Wyatt Martin, president of the Granite City Bank. Martin is probably one of the people who have seen and spoken to the mystery man the most.

Ten guides, a clock, a calendar, and a compass

The astrological specifications were incredibly complex, so the construction company had to employ the help of an astronomer from the University of Georgia. The complex indicates the day of the year, equinoxes, and solstices among others. But the main feature is the 10 guides engraved in several languages.

The mission statement raises the first few questions marks: let these be Guidestones to an age of reason. But the controversy started even before the monument was finished — many claiming it to be the devil’s work. By 1980, when they started building the monument, Martin remembers that people started telling him to stop and accused him of being part of an occult movement.

The main problem is that the commandments engraved on the stones are quite eccentric, to say the least. It didn’t take a lot to compare the first two commandments to the practices of Nazis, among others, but again, this doesn’t mean that a large part of mankind has to disappear – the guides apply in a post-apocalyptic event, where the population is undoubtedly very small; this can be very hard to digest, but seeing things from their point of view is quite interesting, and any comparison with the Nazis or far-right ideology is unreasonable. I mean, if a horrendous tragedy happens, and somehow the world population is reduced to just a few hundred million then yes, it would be a good idea to have some care regarding the number of humans.

Guide number 3 instructed people to use a common language — which would, of course, greatly reduce numerous difficulties throughout today’s world; achieving such a task is, however, impossible at the moment due to evident practical reasons. This is the part that bothered annoyed the Christians, who quoted the bible saying that a common tongue is the mark of the Antichrist — yeah, makes a lot of sense for me, too. Same thing with RULE PASSION—FAITH—TRADITION—AND ALL THINGS WITH TEMPERED REASON — for some, faith has to be the alpha and omega with nothing else in between. For others, yours truly included, finding a sustainable balance is a much nobler goal.

The structure sometimes referred to as an “American Stonehenge”, sure stirred a lot of controversies, but it got us thinking — which means that at least a part of its objective was achieved. Even ignoring the more controversial commandments, the final 6 should definitely be worth achieving. After all, what’s wrong with avoiding unnecessary officials and prizing the truth?

Truly Unique Giant Sequoia Petrified Wood Round

Majestic Giant Sequoia Petrified Wood Round

A one-of-a-kind petrified wood specimen. This massive sequoia, discovered in 2018 on Priday Ranch in Central Oregon, is worthy of being displayed in a museum for all to see. This fossilized slice is from a ‘Giant Sequoia,’ one of the largest individual trees ever known on Earth. It is believed to be 38 million years old and comes from the Oregon area.

With a kaleidoscope of circular patterns, rich in details, this Giant Sequoia is irresistible.

This round petrified wood is a delight for biology enthusiasts as its original cellular structure and grain can easily be examined. Touch and explore the definitive outer bark level before exploring the tree’s growth rings.

Equally satisfying for those geology enthusiasts is the incredible mix and clarity of the colors within this rare specimen. Admire the pools of silicon dioxide that produce those milky creme colors and carbon and iron oxides responsible for the black and hazel tones.

Imagine all of those years that this tree lived, all that history locked in time – it truly is your bridge to the past!

Clear ring structure, solid and most impressive size, our largest specimen is suitable for standing display, table, desk.

Golden Sequoia

This specimen is called the “Golden Sequoia” because its golden tone and striking growth rings cannot be ignored. This is a stunning example of nature’s beauty.

The large petrified wood display specimen is truly breathtaking; every grain showcases its rich level of history, capturing the drama that unfolded millions of years ago.

Gaze your eyes upon the radiant colors and watch as light finds the hidden intricacies. A true rarity, the color palette is a warm bouquet of golden tones, burnt ambers, and deep hazel.

A bridge to the Eocene era, this Golden Sequoia is enchanting, spectacular, and commands attention.

A powerful specimen standing 67” tall, 92”, this one-of-a-kind piece is ideal to wall mount in a grand hallway to greet your guests but it is also deserving as a main focal point in your sitting room.

Of special interest, studying the annual rings you will note that the tree lived a simple life for 300 years. The annual rings are quite symmetric. Then for the preceding years, the annual rings on one side grew larger causing the oval shape that we observe in the picture.

This would be attributed to additional sunlight caused by the tree next to it falling over thus providing that side of the tree more sunlight.

This Golden Sequoia has been sourced from the Central Oregon region, an area of rich biological history with geological significance. Dated at 38 million years old, it is a large specimen with an impressive polish that represents true appreciation and respect for nature. Solid, impressive polish.

This Specimen is spectacular!

Meet Sue One of the Largest, Most Extensive, and Best Preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimen

Sue, the world’s largest, most accurate, and best-preserved T. rex, has attracted millions of visitors to Chicago’s Field Museum.

Many of Sue’s bones have never been found in a T. rex before. Sue’s skeleton, which is 90 percent intact, also gives scientists the rare ability to recreate what T. rex would have felt like and how it moved while it was alive.

Finding most of the bones from a single specimen gave scientists excellent detailed information about Sue’s anatomy and biology.
T. rex is known for its tiny forelimbs, and Sue’s right arm is only the second nearly complete arm ever found.

It will help scientists better understand the strength and motion of this oddly small appendage. Sue’s arms are about the same size as human arms, making them too short to reach her mouth.

Yet the bones are quite thick which indicates they would have been very powerful. Current thinking is that the arms were more useful to T. rex in its early life when it would have been proportionately larger.

If you do visit Sue at the Field Museum, you won’t see all of her bones attached. For example, there are long thin bones that were formed just beneath Sue’s skin on her belly called gastralia. They are different from her ribs and scientists are trying to figure out their positioning and how they should be attached.

They might have helped her breathe or perhaps they helped protect her internal organs. Usually, these delicate bones are incomplete or missing, but Sue has about 75% of her gastralia intact.

Sue’s has a wishbone or furcula in her chest. This bone is the first ever found on a T. rex. Only carnivorous dinosaurs have a furcula and it’s one of the many links between dinosaurs and birds.

The tail on Sue is the most complete tail ever found on a T. rex. A complete tail allows for accurate measurement of the animal’s length.
Perhaps the most significant part of Sue’s skeleton is her skull, and Sue’s is one of the most complete and best-preserved T. rex skulls ever found.

Its structure and arrangement provide some of the best clues about how Sue lived and related to her environment.

Before being put on display, Sue’s skull spent 500 hours inside a powerful CT scanner. As a result, scientists can now learn about the structure of T. rex’s brain.

These CT images show Sue’s brain cavity. The brain itself was about the size and shape of a big sweet potato. Sue had large olfactory bulbs and sinus cavities indicating she had a strong sense of smell which would have been important for hunting or scavenging for food.

400 Million Year Old Hammer discovered In Texas The London

This curious artefact was found in London, Texas, USA in 1934. The hammer was embedded in the rock and has been many theories about its origin, and most importantly its incredible age.

So how did the hammer end up being stuck in the rock? Well, to finish the hammer inside the rock it had to be built before the rock was formed and which was several million years ago.

After their discovery and all the questions raised by the hammer, the researchers decided to abandon the unbelievable discovery at the Somervell Museum in Texas.

The internal handle underwent the process of carbonization based on studies by the Metallurgical Institute of Columbia and the hammerhead was built with iron purity only achievable with modern-day technology.

According to analysis, the head of the hammer consists of 97 pure iron, 2 per cent chlorine and 1 per cent sulfur. Surprisingly researchers also found that the iron had undergone a process of purification and hardening, typical of the metallurgy of the twentieth century.

According to analysis, the rock encasing of the hammer was dated to the Ordovician era, more than 400 million years ago.

The portion of stone surrounding the hammerhead also presented abnormalities, seeming to have merged with some type of sheath covering the hammer. According to geologists, the slow process of petrification dates back hundreds of millions of years.

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This has led several ufologists and ancient astronaut theorists to a quick deduction of the context of the incredible discovery leading them to assume not only that there was a human civilization before the historical process of petrification in Texas, but that this ancient civilization already possessed the necessary technology for the fabrication of a hammer with modern features.

Evidence suggesting that the iron from the hammer might have originated from a meteorite is not a possibility according to researchers. The chemical analysis of the artefact also detected certain amounts of potassium, silicon, chlorine, calcium and sulfur.

Thus, this composition contradicts the hypothesis postulated that the hammerhead belonged to the fragment of a meteorite since the bodies of our solar system do not have that type of chemical composition.

Researchers also believe, that since the head of the hammer was found embedded into the rock, it suggests that the embedding process was performed under different atmospheric conditions to the current, different atmospheric pressure, more similar to those in the remote past.

Against the remote possibility that a meteorite with extremely rare and bizarre chemical composition and exceptional morphology, got caught, in prehistoric times, onto a piece of wood just as the head of the discovered hammer imprisons its handle, some researchers and ancient astronaut theorists point toward the fact that our planet was inhabited in ancient times, by civilizations with advanced technical and technological capacity, of which today we only have legends and items like this one who were trapped in the rock. 

Unfortunately, some scientists do not agree with the theory that an ancient civilization created the hammer, and claim that it was only a metallurgical technique that had been eventually abandoned.

This extraordinary artefact belongs to the list of many other mysterious objects that have been discovered across the globe, and just like the Russian “microchip” or the 300 million-year-old screw, this item has caused debate among researchers and historians who are divided into groups, supporting and denying the possibility that the human race is much older than previously thought.

Whether this artefact is indeed a hammer dating back hundreds of millions of years, is something that will fuel debate among supporters of the ancient astronaut theory and conventional archaeologists, who both have provided arguments explaining the origin and age of the hammer.

Florida sinkhole discovery suggests humans lived in America 14,500 years ago

A stone knife, mastodon bones and fossilized dung Discovered in an underwater sinkhole show that humans lived in north Florida about 14,500 years ago, according to new research that recommends the colonization of the Americas was far more complex than originally believed.

Archaeologists have known about the sinkhole in the Aucilla River, south of Tallahassee, for years. But they recently dived back into the hole to excavate what they call clear proof that ancient mankind spread throughout the Americas about 1,500 years earlier than previously thought.

Almost 200ft wide and 35ft deep, the sinkhole was “as dark as the inside of a cow, literally no light at all”, according to Jessi Halligan, lead diving researcher and a professor at Florida State University at Tallahassee. Halligan dived into the hole 126 times through the course of her research, wearing a headlamp as well as diving gear.

In the hole, the divers discovered stone tools including an inch-wide, several inch-long stone knife and a “biface” – a stone flaked sharp on both sides. The artefacts were found close to mastodon bones; re-examination of a tusk pulled from the hole confirmed that long grooves in the bone were made by individuals, presumably when they removed it from the skull and pulled meat from its base.

“Each tusk this size would have had more than 15lbs of tender, nutritious tissue in its pulp cavity,” said Daniel Fisher, a palaeontologist at the University of Michigan who was a member of a group that once removed a tusk from a mammoth preserved in Siberian permafrost.

Of the “biface” tool, Halligan told Smithsonian magazine: “There is definitely no way it is not made by people. There is no way that’s a natural artefact in any shape or form.”

When ancient people butchered or scavenged the mastodon, the sinkhole was a shallow pond: a watering hole for men, mastodons, buffalo, bears and apparently dogs. The researchers discovered bones that appear to be canine, suggesting dogs trailed the humans, either as companions or competitors for scraps. The discovery makes the sinkhole the earliest documented site for humans in the south-eastern United States. The specialists published their findings in the journal Science Advances on Friday, writing that the artefacts show “much better” evidence of early humans than previous work at the site.

“The proof from the Page-Ladson site is a major leap forward in shaping a new view of the peopling of the Americas at the end of the last Ice Age,” said Mike Waters, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University.

“In the archaeological network, there’s still a terrific amount of resistance to the idea that individuals were here before Clovis,” he added, referring to the so-called “Clovis people”, a group long thought the first band of humans in the United Nation of America.

Waters said that the watering hole would have made for “easy pickings” for people looking to corner prey. Halligan suggested the ancient hunter-gatherers may have been the first regular nomads of the east coast, travelling south in the winter.

“They were very smart about local plants and local animals and migration patterns,” she said. “This is a big deal. So how could they live? This has opened up a whole new line of inquiry for us as researchers as we try to understand the settlement of the Americas.”

Humans are thought to have crossed into the Americas amid the Ice Age, when land-linked Siberia to Alaska, but the timing of the crossing is an issue of a long dispute. In the 1930s, archaeologists Discovered distinctive spearheads among mammoth bones near Clovis, New Mexico. For decades the Clovis individuals were considered the first to colonize the Americas, around 13,000 years ago. 1000 Clovis spearheads have been found around North America and as far south as Venezuela.

But in the last two decades, archaeologists have discovered an 11,000-year-old skull in Brazil, human DNA by way of faeces in a cave in Oregon, evidence of humans in coastal Chile as long as 14,800 years ago, and spearheads in Texas that could date human arrival in the Americas to 15,500 years ago. Most of the manmade artefacts Discovered in these disparate sites lack the signatures of the Clovis people. At the Florida site, the researchers examined twigs in fossilized mastodon dung to date the bones and artefacts, finding them to be about 14,550 years old. The timing casts the Bering Strait theory into doubt, Halligan said: the ice-free land bridge was only open for a few thousand years.

“So the ice-free corridor is not our answer for how the Americas were initially colonized,” she told the Smithsonian.

“The logical way individuals could have come to Florida by 14,600 years ago is if their ancestors entered the Americas by boat along the Pacific Coast,” Waters told Discovery News.

“They could have travelled by boat to central Mexico, crossed and come along the Gulf Coast. They could have entered the Americas via the Columbia River and then travelled inland to the Mississippi waterway and followed it down and entered the Gulf Coast, eventually making their way to Florida.”

Mastodon remains have been found as far north as Kentucky, she said. Fisher added that the discovery that “humans and megafauna coexisted for at least 2,000 years” casts doubt on another theory: that the Clovis hunters quickly made mammoths and mastodons wiped out as they launched a “blitzkrieg” across the continent.

“That means that anyway humans and mastodons interacted, it took at least 2 millennia for the process of extinction to run to completion,” he said at a press conference. The main reason the giant mammals went extinct, he said, was probably the warming atmosphere. Several anthropologists not affiliated with the research said it added to the mounting evidence of a complex, many-staged migration into the Americas.

“I think this paper is a triumph for underwater archaeology and yet another nail in the coffin of the Clovis-first theory,” Jon Erlandson, an anthropologist at the University of Oregon in Eugene, disclosed to Nature magazine.

“I don’t know what else to tell you,” archaeologist Michael Faught, one of the reviewers of the research, told National Geographic. “It’s unassailable.”