All language subtitles for Mysteries.Unearthed.with.Danny.Trejo.S02E19.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

[low drone]

[suspenseful music]

- Mysteries can be buried
anywhere, under the earth,

[volcano erupting]

beneath the sea,

[plane flying]

or even right
under our own feet.

And when we stumble upon them,

sometimes what we find
can change history.

Tonight, strange discoveries

that inspire fear and awe.

From an eerie grave.

- There are skeletons
weighed down with stones.

These aren't typical grave sites

that they're used to unearthing.

- [Danny] To unusual bones.

- It has a long body, two
pairs of paddle-like limbs,

a tail, a pointed snout
full of sharp teeth,

and creepiest of
all, giant eyes.

- [Danny] To a bizarre blob.

- It begins pulsing
and contracting.

This thing isn't
debris, it's alive.

- Join us now because
nothing stays hidden forever.

Siberia is a land known
for dark, buried secrets,

and on one cold morning

a fisherman stumbles
on 54 of them.

- It is March, 2018,

and a fisherman is walking
along the snowy banks

of the Amur River in Siberia.

He's looking for signs of
trout or pike beneath the ice.

The fisherman is alone.

The air is still the
only sound, the crunch

of the snow beneath his boots.

When suddenly in the distance
something catches his eye,

a pink and blue shape
protruding out of the snow.

He steps closer and what
he sees stops him cold.

It's a frozen human hand.

- He immediately starts
looking around thinking, well,

where's the rest of the body?

But there's nothing around him.

And then he looks further down

and he notices
that there's a sack

that's sticking out of the snow.

- [Danny] He opens the
sack and finds more hands.

- There are 54 in
total, all shapes

and sizes, each severed
very cleanly at the wrist.

- [Danny] The fisherman
rushes back to town

and alerts the local police.

- [Andrew] At first, the
authorities treat this as a

crime scene, but the scale

of the crime, 54 human hands,
forces them to escalate this

to the special committee
of the Russian Federation.

- The forensic teams sweep in,

they scour the shoreline
looking for evidence.

They examine the hands,

and they ultimately determine

that these 54 hands
are actually pairs

from 27 different individuals.

- [Danny] The find is unsettling

and comes with an
obvious question.

Who did the severed
hands once belong to?

- [Alex] Authorities claim,
they're only able

to lift prints from one hand,

and those prints don't match
anything in the database.

Speculation runs wild,
investigators wonder,

are these victims

of a serial killer or
some mass execution?

- [Danny] Then, investigators
discover a major clue.

- [Andrew] According to the
authorities, they find

surgical bandages.

as well as hospital shoe covers
scattered across the site.

This points to medical waste,

and shifts the investigation
in a different direction.

- [Danny] After ruling
out area hospitals

and morgues, investigators
trace the trail

to a medical facility
just outside Khabarovsk,

18 miles from the riverbank.

- [Alex] Records show that the
lab did remove hands from over

400 unidentified corpses in the
course of the last year.

- [Danny] According to experts,

some Russian morgues
sever the hands

of unidentified corpses to help
with future identification.

But when questioned,

the facility gives
a surprising answer.

- [Adam] The lab denies any
involvement

in the 54 hands that were found.

- [Danny] Before investigators
can press any further,

the Russian government
abruptly shuts down the case.

- [Andrew] The official report
states that this was a case

of improperly disposed
medical waste,

but others raised questions

about why this case was
wrapped up so quickly.

- [Danny] Adding to
that suspicion

is a key detail revealed

by the man who first
made the discovery.

- [Alex] The fisherman who
discovered the sack

claims he never saw
any surgical bandages

or hospital shoe covers
that were supposed

to indicate medical waste.

- [Andrew] So many wonder
whether this really is a case

of a negligent medical facility,

or if that's just a
convenient cover story,

that the real truth has
been swept under the rug.

In the end, these 54 hands
found in a snowbank next

to a frozen river remain
maybe the ultimate cold case.

- [Danny] We may never
know the full truth

behind this macabre discovery,

but one thing certain:

our next find is
just as strange,

and it's fully alive.

- In Raleigh, North Carolina,

a city maintenance crew
is examining sewer lines

underneath Cameron
Village Shopping Center.

They feed a robotic camera
into the sewer line,

and they're looking for any
cracks, root intrusions,

or other things that
might require maintenance.

- [Sami] The camera is making
its way through the six-inch

pipe, and above ground,

inspectors are watching
the grainy video appear

on a monitor,

and what they're seeing
at first is typical.

You've got water, you've got
some sludge, you've got dirt,

you've got mud, but then
they come across something

that is totally unexpected.

It's this pink blob.

- [Danny] The team
suspects the blockage

is a clump of roots

or a rodent nest until
the camera gets closer,

and it starts moving.

- The blob begins
shifting, pulsing,

and contracting almost like
muscle tissue or an organ.

This thing isn't debris
or a nest, it's alive.

- Needless to say, the crew
has no idea what it is,

so they just hit
record on the camera

to get a few minutes of footage.

- [Andrew] One of the crew then
uploads the footage to YouTube

hoping that someone out there
can help identify

this strange creature.

- [Danny] The video goes viral
and speculation runs rampant.

- [Dr. Hakeem] On line forms
just blow up.

Some say it's a
mutated parasite,

some claim it's a fungus.

- [Kavitha] Some people think it
could be an entirely new

species, and that it might not
even be from Earth at all.

- [Danny] Eventually, biologists

from North Carolina
state take a closer look.

- [Sami] They don't just
watch the video,

they break this thing down

second by second,
frame by frame.

They're watching the way
that the object moves,

the way that it shifts,

the way that it's pulsating,

and then finally it clicks.

- [Dr. Hakeem] They realize that
this isn't a single creature,

but thousands.

It's a colony of tubifex worms.

These are aquatic invertebrates

that typically live in
sludge or decaying matter.

- [Jenn] You usually find
tubifex worms in lakes

and wetlands, but
not in a city sewer.

That's extremely rare.

- What's crazy is that
these worms are tiny.

Individually, you almost
can't even see one.

But when under stress,
say from vibration,

heat, or the approaching
light of a camera,

they clump together for safety.

They twist around

and use their mucus

to glue themselves into
a single throbbing mass.

- [Danny] As freaky
as it appears,

the pulsating blob
isn't dangerous.

- [Andrew] Engineers confirm
that it's not blocking the flow

of water through the sewer,
and biologists confirm

that there's no hazard
on that front either.

So because it doesn't
pose any danger,

the sewer blob is left
to its own devices.

- [Sami] The original footage
is still online.

You can go and watch it like
many people still do today.

And when you do watch
it, there is something

that is weirdly transfixing
about this pulsating blob.

Like, I know what it is,

but I also don't
wanna know what it's.

Ugh.

- [Danny] Imagine going out
for a casual stroll

and spotting something odd
poking out of a hillside nearby.

Could it be old driftwood
or something more alarming?

- Summer 2017,
southeastern Utah,

an employee from the
Utah Geological Survey

is walking along the eastern
border near Colorado

when something catches his eye.

It looks like bones.

- [Andrew] He climbs up to
take a closer look

and sees more bones along
with plant fragments

and petrified driftwood.

Now the rock in this area
is 150 million years old,

so whatever he's looking
at could be very, very old.

So he calls in some experts.

- [Danny] Paleontologist
John Foster

arrives on site to
investigate further.

- [Kavitha] At first, he's not
quite sure what he's looking at.

It appears to be
fossilized plant fragments,

but they're too small to
extract from the rock in order

to examine in the field, so he
carves out a fossilized slab

and takes it back to the lab.

- [Danny] When Foster examines
it under a microscope,

things get weirder.

- [Sami] Now his eye is drawn
to a one inch section

that's particularly
dense with fragments,

and when he looks
closer, he recognizes

that it's not plant fragments,

it's these tiny amphibian bones.

- [Andrew] There are remains
from at least three individual

animals and two
different species,

and they're also
mixed in with scales.

It's a mess really unlike

what you normally see
in Jurassic-era fossils.

To Foster, it looks like
these creatures were eaten

by some kind of
ancient predator.

- [Danny] But one detail
makes Foster's theory

hard to swallow.

- [Kavitha] When digested
fossils are found, they usually

show signs of breakdown,
erosion, or acid damage,

but these bones don't
have any sign of that.

- [Don] Foster realizes this
can only mean one thing.

These animals were swallowed
but never digested.

- [Danny] It's a pile
of vomit frozen in time.

The official name
is regurgitalite,

and it's a very rare find.

- [Sami] For regurgitalite
to fossilize,

the vomit, first of all,
has to land just right.

It has to be buried very
quickly by sediment,

and then immediately
sealed from decay.

The odds of all of these
things happening exactly

as they should are microscopic.

- [Andrew] Foster dates this
slab to around 152 million years

ago, which makes
this regurgitalite

one of the oldest
samples ever discovered.

- [Danny] Since this area was
underwater during the Jurassic

period, experts focused their
attention on a handful

of marine creatures who
could have coughed this up.

- [Don] Their best guess is
that it was a bowfin,

a long bodied sharp toothed
fish that still exists today,

but 152 million years ago,

it was the apex marine predator

in this area.

At over two feet long,

it's the only water predator
at the time large enough

to swallow a meal
like this whole.

Though considering it was
quickly coughed back up,

we can't rule out that
it was a smaller predator

that bit off a little
more than it could chew.

- [Danny] It's one thing to dig
up something weird

from the past.

It's another when you
find something alarming

hidden inside you.

- [Sami] In June of 1999, Sanju
Bhagat is a farm worker

that's living in Nagpur, India.

He's always had a
bit of a potbelly,

but he's strong, he's active

and he works hard in the fields.

As he's become older,
Sanju's stomach has started

to grow and swell.

Now, adding a few
pounds is nothing,

but Sanjay's Stomach
continues to grow.

- [Kavitha] By the time he turns
30,

his friends can't help
themselves poking fun at him

and asking when the baby is due.

He tries to ignore the jokes
and just keep up his farm work,

but over time, the swelling
just gets worse and worse.

- [Dr. Hakeem] Then one night,
Sanju bolts awake

in a panic gasping for air.

His belly is so distended,

it's pressing on his diaphragm

and preventing his
lungs from filling.

He can barely breathe.

- [Andrew] His family rushes him
to a hospital in Mumbai,

where doctors immediately
suspect he has some kind

of abdominal tumor, but
with the patient suffocating

before them, they don't have
time for an X-ray or CT scan,

and they rush him into surgery.

- [Danny] When the surgeon
makes the first incision,

he feels something strange.

- [Sami] It feels hard,

and the doctor swears that he
thinks he can feel fingers,

like a hand is inside
of Sanju's abdomen.

- [Andrew] He works to remove
the object

and ultimately pulls out
a fully formed human arm.

The hand even has
fingernails on it

and then he pulls
out another arm,

and then a pair of genitalia

and as if it couldn't get
any stranger, he then removes

a partially formed human
face, complete with hair.

- [Danny] It's not a tumor,

it's Sanju's
undeveloped twin hidden

inside him since birth.

- [Dr. Hakeem] Roughly 3% of
babies born today are twins,

and sometimes a small percentage

of those twins are conjoined,

and that's what occurs when
the egg doesn't fully split

into two separate embryos.

Conjoined twins rarely
survive until birth,

but then there's a
small set of cases

where the larger twin
can sometimes grow

around the smaller one,
completely engulfing it,

and then the smaller
twin can continue to grow

inside the larger twin.

- [Danny] It's known as
parasitic twin syndrome.

Less than 200 cases have
ever been documented,

and almost never in adults.

- [Sami] Sanju's secret sibling
weighs over nine pounds,

and two of those nine
pounds are just hair.

Once his sibling is fully
removed from his abdomen,

all the pressure on
Sanju's diaphragm goes away

and it becomes significantly
easier for him to breathe.

In the end, Sanju
makes a full recovery

and is able to keep
on with his farm work,

despite what I would imagine

was a very traumatic experience.

- [Danny] Most weird ocean finds
come from the deep,

but one of the
strangest ever showed up

in a quiet little lab in Italy.

- [Andrew] It's 1988, a
German graduate student

named Christian Summer
studies marine biology,

and for the summer he's
taken an assignment

at a marine station
near Portofino, Italy.

The deep waters off Portofino's
coasts are teeming with life

and have amazed
scientists for centuries,

but Christian's job is a
little bit less exciting.

He's stuck inside watching
jellyfish in a tank.

- He's there to observe

a species of jellyfish grow
from half inch polyps up

to full size foot
and a half adults

called Medusas,
which kind of looked

like a red stomach suspended
in a transparent gel.

- [Sami] The lifecycle of these
particular jellyfish

is pretty well known.

He's just there to confirm

what scientists are
already very aware of.

- [Danny] After just
a few mundane shifts,

Christian arrives

for work only to discover

that all the jellyfish are dead.

- He's devastated.

He was supposed to observe
these animals' lifecycle.

Instead, they're all
dead within days.

- Still, he's a dedicated
young scientist determined

to see the project
through, so he continues

to monitor the jellyfish,

hoping to document
their decaying process.

- [Danny] Then, something
unexpected happens.

- [Andrew] The jellyfish don't
begin to dissolve or decay.

Instead, they have
completely transformed.

It seems like they've
turned back the clock

and then restarted.

What he sees are polyps,

the earliest stage
of jellyfish life.

- [Danny] Further studies

confirm Christian's
observations.

- [Austin] Essentially, when
adult Turritopsis dohrnii

are exposed to
stress or starvation,

or confinement, they don't die,

they revert back to
their juvenile form.

- [Dr. Hakeem] The process is
called trans differentiation.

The cells spontaneously
change their identity

and reorganize themselves

into completely new
types of tissue.

- [Sami] So they don't die
and it's not exactly

like a healing factor,
it's more of a rebirth,

and in theory,

they can do this over

and over again forever.

- [Danny] This
incredible phenomenon

has scientists wondering,

is this nature's
version of immortality?

- [Dr. Hakeem] Of course, they
can still die by accident

or be eaten by predators,

but left undisturbed,
it is possible

that they may never die
from natural causes.

- [Sami] Researchers are still
trying

to figure out how
this process works,

what triggers the change,

and if other
creatures can do this,

and most intriguingly,

if they could replicate
this phenomena

in human beings.

- [Dr. Hakeem] For now, one
thing is clear.

Turritopsis dohrnii

doesn't just challenge the
notion of life and death,

they may be the
first known organism

to cheat death entirely.

- [Danny] What's small, has big
feet,

and is featured in a
Hollywood blockbuster?

If you said Hobbits,
you'd be right.

And you also believe
they couldn't be real.

But what if one unusual
find makes you rethink that?

- [Austin] It's 1950 on the
Indonesian island of Flores,

and Dutch Catholic missionary
Father Theodor Verhoeven

spends his day-to-day
teaching classical languages

to the residents,

but his free time, he's out
there exploring the island.

- [Kavitha] One day while
wandering the countryside,

Verhoeven spots some
strange objects scattered

on the ground near the
entrance to a cave.

Curious, he starts digging,

and soon he finds
a bunch of fossils.

- [Adam] Eventually,

Verhoeven stumbles on
something much stranger.

It is a small, fully
formed human-like skeleton

that's barely three
and a half feet tall.

But because the skull
is fully formed,

Verhoeven realizes
this little skeleton

can't be from a child.

- [Danny] Baffled, Verhoeven
publishes his findings,

but the mystery stays buried

until decades later

when another archeologist
picks up the trail.

- [Adam] In 2003, Septomo

and his team are excavating
deep in Liang Bua,

one of the caves that
Verhoeven explored.

And as they dig through
layers of sediment,

they also begin finding loads

of smaller human-like bones.

- [Kavitha] Before long, the
team unearths an entire

human skeleton.

It's a fully adult woman,
but she's only three

and a half feet tall and
only weighs 66 pounds.

- [Danny] She comes to be
known as the Little Lady

of Flores, or Flo for short.

- [Adam] Her bones show
absolutely no signs of any kind

of disease or disorder.

They're completely
normal healthy bones.

They are just smaller,

with the exception

of her strangely oversized feet.

- [Andrew] Eventually scientists
find 13 more skeletons,

all of the same stature, all
with unusually large feet.

- [Kavitha] Carbon dating
indicates

that the bones date
back about 50,000 years.

That means that
they're too recent

and too small to be an
early human ancestor

known as homoerectus,
and neanderthals

never reached this
part of the world.

- [Danny] So who are
these mysterious people,

and why were they so small?

- [Adam] Researchers
determine that this

is an entirely new species

of an early human ancestor.

They end up naming
it homo floresiensis,

and paleoanthropologists
consider it to be one

of the most important finds
in terms of human evolution

in decades.

- [Danny] Despite
their small stature,

they were just as capable

as their larger human cousins,

and researchers think
geography might have played

a role in their tiny physique.

- [Andrew] Scientists
hypothesized that it was the

pressures of island life that
led to their small stature.

Cut off from the
mainland by a deep ocean,

resources would've been scarce.

- [Austin] Over the generations,
homo floresiensis

evolved to need less food.

In this limited environment,
being small was an advantage.

- [Danny] The discovery makes
headlines around the globe,

sparking an
immediate comparison.

- [Adam] At the time,

"The Lord of the Rings"
films are arguably some

of the most popular
films on planet earth.

And this sudden of tiny humans
that were small in stature

with big feet gets
a load of attention.

But being that Tolkien wrote
his books back in the '30s

and '40s, it's pretty
unlikely that he was inspired

by homo floresiensis when he
conceived of "The Hobbits."

- [Andrew] Today, replicas of
the flores Hobbit bones

are on display at a museum
in Australia, and a 3D model

of Flo is on display
at the Smithsonian.

But anyone hoping
to spot the one ring

will have to look elsewhere.

- [Danny] One night in
Poland 200 years ago,

a storm shook loose
more than mud.

It stirred up a strange find

the villagers hoped would
stay buried forever.

- [Andrew] After a heavy summer
storm,

villagers in Pien, Poland
begin the work

of clearing away runoff and
debris from a nearby hill.

But as they work
to clear the road,

something unsettling
emerges from the mud.

It's a human skull.

- [Sami] As they continue to
dig, they find more bones

from more than one skeleton,

and they all seem to be coming

from the hill that's
just above them.

- There was something very
disturbing about that hill.

Animals avoided it,

parents told their
children not to go near it,

and every time there
was a heavy rain,

more bones emerged
from the side of it,

almost as if the earth was
trying to give something back.

- [Danny] Locals stay away

and the site sits untouched for
almost 200 years until 2022,

when two archeologists arrive
to investigate further,

and what they find
is disturbing.

- [Sami] As they start
excavating,

the ground is riddled

with bodies, but these aren't
the typical grave sites

that they're used to unearthing.

- [Andrew] There are skeletons
weighed down with stones.

There's even a
skeleton with a body

of a child laid across its
legs, forming a kind of cross.

- [Danny] The team uncovers 100

of these strange
unmarked graves,

but is confused
by their purpose,

until one digger's discovery
helps make it more clear.

- His trial hits
something with a clink.

Working carefully, he
brushes away the dirt

and he uncovers a long
curved metal piece.

It's a sickle and it's
been deliberately placed

over the neck of a
young woman's skeleton.

- [Sami] But then they make
another unsettling discovery.

There's a padlock that has
been clamped around her foot

as if it were chaining
her to the earth.

- [Andrew] They then turn
to not only history

but folklore to help
understand why this woman

and all of the other
burials are here.

- [Danny] It turns out
that over 400 years ago,

a wave of panic
swept across Poland,

one driven by fear
of the undead.

- [Sami] The villagers believed

that the dead were rising

from the graves to
hunt the living.

Described as pale with
sharp claws and sharp teeth,

these beings would feed
on the blood of the living

and spread disease and fear.

- [Nicola] The Polish called
these people upier,

which is an early version

of the word vampire.

These beings were
resurrected bodies of people

who had died early
or violent deaths,

and if you had suffered
that kind of a fate,

the danger is that you
might come back as an upier.

- [Hugo] To stop them,

communities took
drastic measures.

Some were bound in rope.

Others had bricks
stuck in their mouths

to try to stop them from biting.

- [Nicola] The most feared were
actually padlocked to the

ground or buried with a sharp
sickle arranged over their neck,

so if they suddenly sat up,

they would effectively
decapitate themselves.

- [Danny] The
researchers document

the young woman's grave in full,

then transfer her remains
back to the lab for analysis.

But there's one thing
they leave alone.

- [Sami] The padlock is never
opened

because sometimes,
even in science,

it's better to be
safe than sorry.

- Next up, another strange body,
but this one wasn't buried,

it was propped up
in a dusty basement.

- [Andrew] Katoomba, New South
Wales, is a quiet town known

for its misty mountain views
and abundance of antique shops.

Bea Bellingham is
browsing the basement

of the Katoomba
Vintage Emporium.

This is the type of place

where you might
pick up an old lamp

or a piece of vintage furniture.

- As she turns a
corner, she freezes.

She sees something strange.

She moves closer
and inspects it.

There's a human figure
in front of her.

It's tied to a dolly
kneeling and completely nude.

- [Andrew] It's extremely
lifelike and strange mannequin,

and the face is
awfully familiar.

- [Danny] She snaps a photo
and uploads it to Instagram.

It doesn't take long
to get a response.

- [Dr. Hakeem] The post quickly
goes viral,

and in no time, people
identify this freaky figure.

It's Sylvester Stallone,

or more specifically,

it's Stallone as a
character John Spartan

from his 1993 movie
"Demolition Man."

In one of the movie's
most iconic scenes,

his character is cryogenically
frozen, nude, vulnerable,

and suspended in midair.

And this figure looks very much

like Stallone's character
from that movie.

So it must have been a prop
from the actual production.

- [Danny] Once that connection
is made, the mystery shifts

to how did it get here.

- [Andrew] Another poster
quickly chimes in

that he's seen this
Stallone before,

only it wasn't at the movies,

it was at a restaurant
in Sydney, Australia.

- [Danny] Not just
any restaurant,

one of the most famous
Hollywood ventures of the 1990s,

Planet Hollywood.

- [Kavitha] In the early 1990s,

Planet Hollywood
exploded onto the scene.

It was a restaurant chain
backed by big Hollywood stars

with movie memorabilia
plastered on the walls.

- [Andrew] In 1996, Planet
Hollywood opened its doors in

Sydney, and on hand for the
festivities was none other

than one of the chain's
celebrity investors,

Sylvester Stallone.

- Rocky, Rocky!

- [Andrew] And on display,
a life-size replica

of Stallone's character
cryogenically frozen

in "Demolition Man."

- [Danny] Unfortunately,

Planet Hollywood went
bankrupt in 1999,

and when its doors closed, much
of the memorabilia vanished.

- [Kavitha] No one's quite sure
how it ended up in Katoomba,

but Bea says it was so bizarre
that she had to document it.

- [Danny] You never know when

or where you're going to
find something strange.

For one man in England,
his freaky discovery began

with nothing more
than a nagging cough.

- [Adam] It is 2017 in Preston
in the north of England,

and a man by the
name of Paul Baxter

for months has been
plagued by severe coughs

and chest infections

that just keep coming back
again and again and again.

At first he thinks it's maybe
bronchitis or pneumonia,

but it's not going away,

so he finally decides
to see his doctor.

- [Dr. Hakeem] His doctor sends
him for a chest X-ray,

and they do see that there
is something in his lungs,

but it's inconclusive.

So the doctor sends
him for a CT scan.

- [Danny] The results reveal

a mass deep inside Paul's lung.

- [Andrew] The mass is
irregular, dense,

and lodged deep in the bronchus.

Doctors assume the worst.

This could be a tumor,
maybe cancerous.

- [Jenn] Paul is referred to
the respiratory team

at the Royal Preston Hospital.

They schedule a bronchoscopy,
which is a procedure

that lets doctors look directly

into the lungs using
this flexible tube

that has a light
in a camera on it.

- [Danny] Pulmonologist, Dr.
Mohammed Munavvar

begins what should be
a routine procedure.

- [Andrew] Watching from the
monitor,

Munavvar guides the
scope down Paul's trachea

into the bronchial tree

until the mass comes into sight.

But this is not like any tumor
the doctor has ever seen.

- [Adam] It's about half an inch
long.

It's bright orange, and it
seems to be made of plastic.

So Munavvar carefully
inserts mini biopsy forceps

to retrieve the object,

and he looks at it on the
screen, and it's a toy.

It's a mini plastic
traffic cone.

- [Danny] When Paul wakes up,

doctors hand him the
strange orange object.

At first, he's confused,

but then a long forgotten
memory comes rushing back.

- [Jenn] When Paul was seven, he
got a playmobile toy set

for his birthday.

It came with orange vested
construction workers,

stop signs, and traffic cones.

- [Dr. Hakeem] One day, like a
lot of young curious kids, he

put one of these little toy
traffic cones in his mouth

and accidentally inhaled it.

He cough a few times, felt fine,

so he just went right
back to playing.

- [Danny] Incredibly, the
cone slipped into his lung

and stayed there for 41 years.

- [Andrew] Over time, the lung
formed a protective layer of

tissue around the traffic cone.

The cone itself remained fine,

essentially mummified
in Paul's lung,

not causing any problems

until it began to
impact his breathing.

- [Danny] The unusual
find is published

by the British Medical Journal.

- [Dr. Hakeem] Experts called
it one

of the most unusual bronchial
obstructions ever documented,

and they all agreed that
Paul was incredibly lucky.

- [Adam] Four months after
surgery, Paul fully recovers.

The cough is gone.

His lungs are clear.

Oh, and that little
orange traffic cone,

it sits on his mantle
as a conversation piece.

- [Danny] If you think a toy
inside a lung is freaky,

just wait until you see

what one young girl finds
inside a stone cliff.

- [Don] On the whim
swept cliffs of Lyme Regis

in Dorset, England,
12-year-old Mary Anning

and her brother Joseph are
out exploring after a storm.

As they walk by the shoreline,

Joseph spots
something poking out

of some limestone
in the cliff side.

- They get closer and realize

that half buried is a
strange fossilized skull.

This doesn't look like
a normal animal skull.

It's got sharp teeth,
unusually large eye sockets,

and it's abnormally long.

- [Don] Most 12 year olds would
move on and forget about it,

but not Mary.

- She returns to the site day
after day for nearly a year

as she excavates the
fossil from the cliff side.

- [Don] Eventually, she digs out
a massive 17-foot long skeleton.

It has a long body, two pairs
of paddle like limbs, a tail,

a pointed snout
full of sharp teeth,

and creepiest of
all, giant eyes.

- [Danny] Mary becomes
a local legend,

but her strange
discovery doesn't look

like anything
anyone's seen before,

leaving experts
divided and baffled.

- [Kenneth] At first, scientists
brush it off

as maybe just the
remains of a crocodile.

And it does have a
crocodile-like snout,

but others aren't so sure.

- [Don] After a few years of
debate,

the scientific community
finally agrees,

this is no croc.

They also agree it
is very, very old.

- [Danny] Eventually,
paleontologists call

the strange find
ichthyosaurus, or fish lizard,

but it takes four more years

to figure out
exactly what it is.

- [Don] It isn't until 1821
that scientists determined

that this isn't a
fish or a mammal,

but actually, a previously

unknown 200 million
year old marine reptile.

- [Kavitha] Meanwhile, Mary
continues

to actively explore
the world around her.

In 1823, she finds a nearly
complete plesiosaurus skeleton.

- And a few years
later she digs up

Britain's first ever pterosaur.

- [Danny] With
each new discovery,

Mary Anning's reputation grows

as one of the most remarkable
fossil hunters of her time.

- [Kavitha] Mary Anning dies of
breast cancer in 1847,

and her death is
noted in the Journal

of the Geological Society,
which is a big deal

for a woman at the time.

- Then in 2015, she
gets another honor,

when the name

of her first find is updated
to icthyosaurus anningae,

which is the credit
she deserves as one

of the most skilled self-taught
paleontologists of her time.

- [Danny] In the jungles
of southern Mexico,

a routine swing of
a machete is about

to strike something unexpected.

- [Nicola] It's the early 1860s
near the remote Mexican village

of Tres Zapotes,

and a farm worker is
clearing away some brush

so he can plant
some crops there,

when he notices
something unusual.

His blade hits
something in the soil,

so he starts clearing
away the earth

to try and see what he's hit.

- [Hugo] What he finds is hard,
smooth, and absolutely huge.

As he clears more dirt,
contours start to emerge,

they look like lips,
a nose, an eyelid.

- [Danny] To his surprise,
it's no ordinary stone.

It's a nine foot tall head.

- [Sami] Word spreads quickly

and locals begin to
gather around it,

unsure of what exactly
has been found.

- [Andrew] Some in the village
think they've uncovered a God.

Others worry that they've
disturbed something,

something that might
even be cursed,

and so advocate to
leave this alone.

- [Danny] The strange
stone sits there untouched

for the next 70 years,

until an American archeologist
named Matthew Stirling

hears about the
massive stone head

and decides to investigate.

- [Sami] Sterling locates the
statue,

and then begins excavating
around the area.

Soon he digs up more heads,
many more, 17, in fact,

the largest of which
weighs around 40 tons.

Not only that, they look unlike
anything archeologists have

ever seen in this area,
and they're not alone,

because alongside these statues,

they find things
like altars, thrones,

and other items carved
in the same style.

- [Danny] Sterling thinks
this could be evidence

of an ancient civilization
no one knew existed.

- [Hugo] He names the ancient
people the Olmec,

which means people from
the land of rubber,

a reference to the fact

that this region is important

in a natural rubber production.

- [Sami] Radiocarbon dating

of materials located near these
sculptures dates them back

to anywhere between
1500 to 400 BCE,

which suggests
that it is possible

that the Olmec people may
have been the mother culture

that would later give way

to other civilizations
like the Aztec

and the Maya.

- [Danny] If true,

the Olmec's techniques
would've been revolutionary

for their time,

with stone crafting

as advanced as Stonehenge

or the pyramids of Giza.

- [Nicola] Geologists identified
the stone that was used

for the heads as basalt comes
from the Tuxtla mountains,

which were about 50 miles away.

So imagine these
people were able

to transport 40
ton pieces of stone

50 miles over thick jungles.

- [Sami] Experts think that they
might have used rafts, rollers,

or ramps to move them, but
nobody's entirely sure.

- [Danny] Moving them
is one challenge.

Understanding them is another.

- [Andrew] Some experts believe

that these are the
faces of ancient Gods.

Others suggest that
they're simply too lifelike

to not refer to living people,

and so maybe these were used
to honor important leaders

or to mark their territory.

- [Nicola] Today, some of
these sculptures

are housed in
archeological museums,

but others remain in their
original sites just feet away

from where they were
really discovered.

- [Sami] And honestly, maybe
it's for the best that they stay

where they were found,
because 3,500 years ago,

the EC moved these 40
ton stones, carved them,

and then set them down in
a very specific location

for a very specific
reason and purpose.

What that purpose is though
remains the big mystery.

- [Danny] From graves to sewers,

and even inside the human body,

strange finds come crawling out

of places you'd never expect.

I'm Danny Trejo.

Thanks for watching
"Mysteries Unearthed."