Original subtitles

Mysteries can be buried anywhere.

Under the earth.

Beneath the sea.

Or even right under our own feet.

And when we stumble upon them,

sometimes, what we find can change history.

Tonight, unexpected treasure.

From a gold hoard stashed in a suburban yard.

Anytime you raise the specter of stolen gold

and hidden treasure in the Old West,

at the top of that list is none other than Jesse James.

To an astonishing national prize.

There's something wedged between the painting

and the wood backing, and it's worth millions of dollars.

To a huge diamond in the rough.

He notices a cool looking rock sticking out

of the ground, and when he gets a closer look,

he's stunned at what the finds.

Join us now, because nothing stays hidden forever.

Imagine learning that something in your house

dates back thousands of years

and is actually priceless.

That's just what happened in New York City.

In 2013, Roman art expert Dario del Bufalo

holds an event in New York City

to celebrate the release of his new book.

The book is about porphyry.

Porphyry is a reddish purple mineral

that has incredibly fine crystals

that creates a faint iridescence.

And it was used in frescoes, paintings, and mosaics

throughout ancient civilizations.

While he's signing copies,

he overhears a couple as they're thumbing through the book.

"Oh Helen, look.

That's your mosaic."

From the corner of his eye,

del Bufalo can see that they're referring

to a 2,000-year-old Roman mosaic

that's been lost since World War II.

He's completely in shock.

He starts off after the couple.

He points to the picture and asks if this is the mosaic

in particular that they're talking about.

And the man confirms that his friend Helen Fioratti

has it in her house as a coffee table.

Right there in Midtown Manhattan is this piece

of the ancient world.

And she's using it for coasters and her remote control.

del Bufalo believes the coffee table may be

a missing artifact from the infamous leader Caligula.

Caligula is a notorious Roman emperor

from between the years 37 to 41 AD.

The histories describe his reign as being filled

with murder, sex scandals, and outrageous behaviors.

He even makes his favorite horse a senator

from the Roman Senate as a way to insult other senators.

He might've legitimately been insane.

So in addition to all the madness,

he constructed these two lavish, massive party barges

where he would continue his activities at sea.

And right in the heart of this hedonistic vessel

is the mosaic that becomes Helen's coffee table top.

By 41 AD, even Caligula's guards

have had enough of his antics

and conspire to assassinate him.

After Caligula is stabbed to death,

the vessels are sunk to erase any trace of his brutal rule.

They remain underwater

for nearly 2,000 years,

until an infamous dictator goes looking for them.

In the late 1920s, Generalissimo Benito Mussolini

is looking to find whatever pieces of ancient Roman glory

he can to boost his own cred.

So he's on a mission to dig up old ruins.

He orders Lake Nemi drained,

hoping to find Caligula's fabled floating pleasure palaces.

It is an unbelievable, Herculean undertaking,

but eventually, once the lake is drained,

they retrieve two massive structures,

each the size of a modern jumbo jet,

but they are Caligula's pleasure barges.

Once these barges are cleaned and examined,

they find art, they find weapons, they find coins,

and they find these mosaics.

Mussolini is so thrilled with this find

that he opens up a museum in honor of these barges.

Then, on May 31, 1944,

as World War II rages,

the museum burns to the ground.

And everything inside

is thought to be lost.

So when Dario del Bufalo hears

that something from this museum is in Midtown Manhattan

and is in this lady's apartment,

he's taken aback to say the very least.

del Bufalo alerts New York authorities,

who decide to pay Helen a visit.

In 2017, Helen gets a knock on her door.

It's the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

And they're here about the mosaic.

They start peppering Helen

with all sorts of questions.

The authorities suspect that the mosaic was stolen

from the museum before it burned down in 1944.

She explains that, back in the 1960s,

she bought it from an aristocratic Italian family

and that even an Italian police officer

had helped broker the sale.

Unfortunately for Helen, the Italian government wants

that mosaic back.

And since she has no way of proving that it wasn't looted

before she bought it,

the New York DA's Office confiscates the coffee table.

And ultimately,

this mosaic that was owned by Caligula

and Mussolini and a lady named Helen finds its way back

to the Museum of Roman Ships in Nemi.

That's not quite

the ending Helen hoped for, but a couple in California

has much better luck.

In February of 2013,

a Northern California couple are walking their dog

on their property when they see something

that catches their eye.

It's a can protruding from the ground.

But as they pull on the wire handle,

they find that what it's attached to is incredibly heavy.

They take the lid off and they can't believe

what they see.

The whole thing is filled, crammed packed with gold coins.

They go on to discover seven more cans,

holding a total of nearly 1,400 coins.

The couple, now known only as John and Mary,

because they wanna remain anonymous,

get in touch with a coin expert to authenticate

and evaluate the haul.

The expert confirms the coins are real

and estimates they could be worth

as much as $10 million in all.

Not only are these coins in great condition,

they are from the late 1800s.

And most of them appear to be uncirculated.

Now, that's unusual.

That means that they never made it from the mint

to circulate as common currency.

These coins were probably on their way to a bank,

and they were being transported there by stagecoach,

which then may have been liberated by robbers.

If this is true, who could've stolen

such a large hoard and why didn't they come back to get it?

Anytime you raise the specter of stolen gold

and hidden treasure in the Old West,

at the top of that list is none other

than the most notorious outlaw,

Jesse James.

James is not only known as a robber in the area

but he was amassing wealth to create a new Confederate Army.

But historians quickly dismiss this theory.

James was killed by Robert Ford in 1882,

and some of those coins are dated as late as 1894.

So that eliminates Jesse James.

Next on the suspect list is Charles Boles,

better known as Black Bart, gentleman bandit,

noted for his cunning and also for his flair.

It is said that he robbed somewhere around 30 stagecoaches

in Northern California,

which is where this couple finds this vast amount of loot.

So for many, he's an obvious suspect.

In 1883, Bart is captured and sentenced to prison.

He spends the next four years behind bars in San Quentin.

So maybe he stole and stashed the loot

after he was released.

If so, he never retrieves it.

Regardless of who stole it,

or if it's even stolen at all,

John and Mary wonder if they can keep the loot they found.

When news of the discovery breaks,

there's some speculation, maybe fear,

that the U.S. Mint will, of course, swoop in,

but the mint investigates and they are not able

to tie any of the coins to any records they have

of stolen money from the past.

Now that they're free to do with them as they please,

the couple takes a portion of the coins

and puts them up for sale.

And pretty quickly, the couple pockets a cool $3.8 million.

And to this day, it is the largest discovery

of gold coins ever in the United States.

Not a bad day for just taking a walk with your dog.

When the Founding Fathers wrote

the Declaration of Independence back in 1776,

they printed around 200 copies.

Just 23 were thought to survive.

Then a man on a day trip

uncovers something really surprising.

While browsing at a local flea market

in Adamstown, Pennsylvania,

a man spots a dull and worn painting of a country scene.

It's so worn that he can't even make out

the artist's signature on it.

But he's not interested in the painting.

He's interested in the frame that's around it.

It's gilded and ornately carved,

and he wants it for a different picture he already has.

So this guy plunks down $4 and buys it.

The man takes it home

and begins to remove the painting from the frame.

That's when he sees something strange.

There's something wedged between the painting

and the wood backing.

It's about the size of an envelope.

He unfolds it and he realizes,

it's the Declaration of Independence.

He doesn't think much of this at first.

I mean, it's the Declaration of Independence,

and there are copies of this everywhere.

But it looks like a pretty old copy.

Curiously, this copy contains no signatures

by the Founding Fathers.

He has a friend who's a bit of a history buff

who encourages him to go and get it appraised,

just in the off chance

that this might be something valuable.

He takes it to Sotheby's to have it examined,

and their experts know immediately,

he's found something special.

It's not just any copy

of the Declaration of Independence.

It's a pristine first edition.

When we think of the Declaration of Independence,

we think of the signed version of the document.

The most famous signature among them is the signature

of John Hancock.

But that version was actually signed and completed

on August 2, 1776,

four weeks after the original

Declaration of Independence was issued.

You see, when the Continental Congress adopts

the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776,

it has a Philadelphia printer, John Dunlap,

print 200 copies that evening to carry the news

of independence out to the people.

Over the next few days,

they're distributed to several colonial assemblies

and leaders, including George Washington.

And they become known as the Dunlap Broadsides.

Finding one of the original 200 Dunlap Broadsides

is a pretty amazing thing,

but then finding one that's in perfect condition,

now that is extraordinary.

But how did this priceless document

end up behind a painting?

In 1776, the colonies were still under British rule.

Having a copy of the Declaration of Independence

in your back pocket would lead to treason.

So some theorize that the original owner stashed it

behind the frame to hide it from the British.

Most of the Dunlap copies are owned by institutions,

mostly in America, a few in the UK.

But this is only the third to be held in private hands.

So when it goes up for auction at Sotheby's in 1991,

it sells for $2.4 million.

This is the highest price ever paid

for a piece of Americana at the time

and a heck of a return on a $4 investment.

A $4 find that sells for millions gets my attention.

But what if a missing treasure stared you right in the face

every night at dinner?

That's what happened to three brothers

from New Jersey in 2015.

The Landau brothers hated the painting

that was in their dining room in their childhood home.

They found it kind of creepy.

It depicts an unconscious young man

being tended to by two people,

one of whom is trying to resuscitate the youth

with smelling salts.

To the brothers and their dinner guests,

this painting is not the type of thing

you want to contemplate over dinner.

According to family lore,

the grandfather bought the painting

before the Great Depression at an estate sale

and handed it down from generation to generation.

In 2011, after the brothers' parents die,

the painting ends up in the basement,

where it's forgotten for several years.

Then in 2015,

the brothers decide it's time to clean out the basement.

And when they rediscover the painting,

they reach out to a professional

appraiser, John Nye.

Nye is not impressed with the painting,

which he calls remarkably unremarkable.

But he thinks it might be worth something.

So he goes, "Okay, on a good day,

maybe we'll get 500 to $800."

So in 2015, Nye and company set up the painting for auction.

Now, the brothers are not expecting anything

to come of this.

Their expectations are, in fact, so low

that they don't attend the auction.

And because it's a Jewish holiday,

they have their phones off.

The auction goes pretty much the way

Nye thought it would at first.

The bidding starts at $250,

then it goes to $500.

A French bidder jumps in at $5,000.

Suddenly, we have an international bidding war

on our hands, 8,000, 10,000.

Now, this painting is reaching into six-figure region,

100,000, 200,000.

The bids continue to go up.

When the final gavel strikes,

a French dealer walks away with this painting

for $1.1 million.

Needless to say, John Nye is in complete shock.

It turns out,

Nye missed an important detail on this work of art.

In the upper right-hand corner of the painting,

there appears to be some writing,

but it's hard to make it out.

The dealers think the writing is a monogram

that spells out RHF.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon Fesset,

which stands for Rembrandt, son of Harmen, made this.

The French dealer believes that this is one

of Rembrandt's "Senses,"

a series that the artist produced early in his career

when he was only 18 years old.

The five senses being a popular theme at the time

for artists to depict.

This painting depicts the sense of smell.

The French dealer gets the painting.

He has it authenticated, and it turns out

that it is one of the missing Rembrandts.

That $1.1 million windfall

turns out to be nothing compared to what happens next.

The dealer now turns around and sells it

to Thomas Kaplan, who is a collector of fine art

from the Dutch Golden Age.

And it's reported that Kaplan buys it for around $4 million.

Which is a profit of $3 million to the French dealer.

For Kaplan, the painting is invaluable.

He already has three

of the other Rembrandt "Senses" paintings,

and the last one about taste is still missing.

So if you have a creepy painting hanging

in your dining room depicting a woman tasting something,

it might be worth having that appraised.

Some people believe in lucky charms,

like four-leaf clovers, but one family uncovered

something amazing thanks to a lucky horseshoe.

In 1940, the Jones family of Peterstown, West Virginia

is internationally famous.

Grover and Grace Jones

are the equivalent to modern-day celebrities,

and that's because they have 15 children.

But here's the kicker.

All of them are boys.

According to "Ripley's Believe it or Not,"

this is a world record.

The New York World's Fair celebrates Grover Jones Day,

and President Roosevelt

even invites the family to the White House.

But incredibly,

this won't be the family's most rewarding moment.

That story begins a decade earlier

when Grover finds something unusual.

Back in 1928, Grover is playing horseshoes

with his eldest son, whom they call Punch.

During the game, one of Punch's tosses goes way off course,

and so Punch goes off to find the lost horseshoe.

And he notices a cool looking rock

sticking outta the ground.

To Punch and his father,

this looks like an interesting piece of quartz,

which is common in that area of West Virginia.

So they put it in a cigar box, put it on the shelf

in the family shed, and forget about it.

14 years later,

Punch develops an interest in rocks

and remembers the piece of quartz he found with his dad.

Punch reaches out to a geology professor

named Roy Holden at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

Now, Holden is

used to people coming to him with stones and gems

that they've found thinking that they're something more

than they are.

So he initially blows Punch off,

but Punch is persistent.

So Holden pulls out his magnification loop,

and when he gets a closer look,

he's stunned at what he finds.

This rock is not a piece of quartz.

It's an actual diamond.

It's a 34-carat alluvial diamond.

And it's the largest ever discovered in the United States.

Alluvial diamond is the term we use

for diamonds that have been dislodged

from their point of origin.

Erosion over millions of years washes them away,

and then they settle

in riverbanks or on the ocean floor.

Holden speculates that the markings on the stone

and the size of it suggests that it was either formed

in Virginia or maybe even North Carolina.

Then it washed down a river,

eventually depositing in the creek behind Punch's house.

But alluvial diamonds this size

are found almost exclusively in Africa.

So how did this one end up in a West Virginia backyard?

Back in the 1920s,

a circus comes to Peterstown.

And along with the bearded lady and the carnival barker

was an African elephant.

Perhaps the diamond was embedded in the elephant's foot

back in Africa, then dislodged later in the US,

where it eventually winds up in Punch and Grover's backyard.

Bottom line, it's as good a guess as any,

because even Holden, the geologist,

can't seem to figure out this mystery.

But regardless of that,

it's an incredibly lucky find.

But that luck doesn't last forever.

In 1944, World War II is raging,

and Punch decides to loan his lucky diamond

to The Smithsonian while he goes off to fight in the war.

Sadly, Punch will never see the diamond again.

He's killed in an ambush on Easter Sunday, 1945.

Over the next four decades,

the diamond spends most of its time

in a safe deposit box at the local bank.

And then, in 1984, the family decides

to finally sell the stone.

The diamond sells for just over $200,000

in today's currency.

It's purchased by an anonymous Asian buyer.

There's not much known about him,

and for the last four decades,

the Punch diamond has gone completely underground.

Nobody knows where it is.

Nobody knows who has it.

And nobody knows if we'll ever see it again.

Unearthing a diamond worth 200,000 in

your own backyard is definitely thrilling.

But for students at one school in Scotland,

finding treasure is almost routine.

1984, a group of teenage boys in Fife, Scotland

are messing around the school yard

of the 300-year-old Dalhousie Castle School.

One of the boys stumbles across a strange looking object,

a bronze patina human figure.

The students are excited.

They have no idea what they've found,

but they think it's gonna make them rich.

The boys race to the Royal Scottish Museum,

and in their excitement, they basically stampede

through the doors,

so eager to have someone check out their find.

After ordering them to settle down,

the museum curator, Dr. Elizabeth Goring,

takes a look at what they've brought in.

Immediately, she is taken aback.

This looks like an ancient Egyptian artifact.

But when she asks where they found it,

they say it's at the 300-year-old Dalhousie School.

Goring's colleagues realize

this isn't the first time an Egyptian artifact was found

at the school.

Multiple children made other smaller discoveries

over the last 30 years.

But this find sparks new interest.

How did artifacts from the sands of Alexandria

end up here?

One working theory is that they belonged

to Alexander Leslie-Melville, Lord Balgonie,

who had served in the Crimean War in the 1850s.

During the conflict,

he suffers from some mental distress

and he returns home ill.

To speed his recovery,

the family sends him to the warm climate of Egypt.

During this time, it was really common

for dealers to try and sell

Egyptian antiquities to tourists.

So it's possible that he acquired some

and brought them home to Scotland.

Before the property is the Dalhousie School,

it's Lord Balgonie's family home.

He lived there, so it's reasonable to think

that this is where any artifacts he picked up in Egypt

would have landed when he came back.

According to some experts,

the artifacts are held in a building adjacent

on the grounds, and when Lord Balgonie dies a year later

of tuberculosis, it's said that the building was demolished,

thus burying the artifacts within.

The majority of the finds have ended up

at the National Museums of Scotland.

The Scottish government declares them a treasure trove,

the only ancient Egyptian artifacts

to have received that honor.

Titans like John D. Rockefeller

have made fortunes from oil,

but in 2017, one man finds a fortune in someplace unusual.

British businessman Nick Mead has an unusual enterprise,

a company called Tanks A Lot.

They purchase decommissioned military tanks

from all over the world and they rent them out

for special events,

weddings, kids birthday parties.

And for $3,000,

he'll even give you a guided tour around London.

So it's fair to say that Nick's a tank guy,

and he's always on the lookout for something new

to add to his fleet.

One day while he's browsing online,

Nick comes across a real score.

It's an ex-Iraqi military type 69 main battle tank

that was used in the Gulf War.

This is a tank with a lotta power

that has a 100-millimeter main gun

and a 12.7-millimeter machine gun.

And believe it or not, Nick gets it

for less than the price of a lotta new cars, $37,000.

When the Iraqi tank arrives,

Nick and his mechanic dive right in.

And when they get to the gas tank,

they find it's remarkably heavy.

They're excited, but also very cautious.

If you can lift a bit.

- What's the matter? - What is it?

- What the? - No.

What the?

Inside the fuel tank, there are five gold bars

with an estimated

cash value of $2.4 million.

Oil has been called liquid gold,

but how did actual gold end up in this tank?

In August of 1990, during the first Gulf War,

Iraqi troops storm into Kuwait and loot

almost everything in sight.

They steal the gold bath fixtures from the Emir's palace.

They take computers.

They take rare antiquities and Islamic art.

They even take animals from the Royal Zoo.

But their celebration is short-lived.

US forces intervene and liberate Kuwait in February, 1991.

And the return of the looted merchandise

becomes a crucial part of the peace negotiations.

Six months after the end of the conflict,

the Iraqis returned about 3,200 gold bars to Kuwait

under UN supervision.

And that gold was worth a whopping $700 million.

But it seems, not everything is sent back.

The Iraqi troops do their best to hide their plunder,

and the gas tank of an armored vehicle seems

as good as any place to hide their loot.

Then eventually the vehicle makes it way to Great Britain,

where it's purchased by a young mechanic

who puts new tracks on the vehicle,

and repairs the engine, but he never checks the gas tank

before selling it to Nick.

To his credit, when he discovers the gold bars,

Nick reports them to the authorities.

British authorities show up, they take the gold bars,

and they give Nick a receipt.

This is all done with the explanation

that they're going to find the rightful owner

and return the gold bars to that owner.

But it's been over seven years now,

and as far as Nick knows,

the gold bars have not been returned

to their original owner.

He even tells reporters that he regrets

turning the gold over to the cops

and feels that he should, at the very least,

have got a finder's fee.

Imagine stumbling upon an even older priceless find.

That's exactly what happened to this curious man.

In April 2022, a fabric designer named Philip Jacobs

is out for this leisurely stroll along the beach

near Kimmeridge Bay in southern England.

It's part of his regular routine,

a chance to get some exercise,

as well as partake in one of his favorite pastimes,

scouring the beach for hidden treasures.

Over the years,

many fossils have been discovered on

this stretch of beach,

leading to its nickname, the Jurassic Coast.

As Jacobs walks along the shoreline,

he catches a glimpse of an object

that looks like just a piece of driftwood.

So he takes a closer look.

And what he finds is this two-foot long snout,

complete with these massive teeth.

And Jacobs knows he has found something cool,

but he isn't exactly sure what it is.

In the meantime, he contacts a friend

who's a paleontologist named Steve Etches.

And he brings him to the site.

Etches takes one look at the snout

and can hardly contain his excitement.

Jacobs found part of the skull of a Plesiosaur,

a marine reptile that lived with the dinosaurs,

also known as the Sea Rex,

which is a nod to its fearsome land equivalent, the T. Rex.

Plesiosaurs ruled the water 150 million years ago.

They were massive creatures.

They could grow to about 40 feet long,

which is about the size of a school bus.

And they were the apex predators of the sea.

And they didn't take a backseat to anyone

due to their extremely powerful jaws.

Today, saltwater crocodiles are known

to have the strongest bite of any living creature.

But the Plesiosaur was at least twice as powerful.

Etches and his team continue searching the beach

hoping to find more of the Sea Rex.

They eventually discovered that the fossil fell

from one of the cliffs towering from overhead.

They climb way up the mountainside,

eventually excavating the rest of the skull,

which turns out to be over six feet long,

completely intact with no missing bones.

Jacobs' discovery reveals anatomical features

that researchers haven't seen before,

including one that is believed

to be a light-sensitive third eye used for stalking prey.

And his friend Steve Etches thinks

that this is just the beginning.

He thinks the rest of this creature is somewhere

buried here and is going to reveal even more.

And it's all due to one guy who went for a stroll

on a local beach.

In 2013, a French mountain climber is scaling

the quite imposing peak of Mont Blanc,

which is the tallest mountain in the Alps

and Western Europe.

It stands at a staggering 15,000 feet high.

As he's ascending towards the summit,

something catches his eye.

It's a glint of metal off to the side

poking out of the ice and snow.

He digs with his pick

and produces a metal box.

When he opens it,

he sees sapphires, rubies, precious gems.

Adding to the mystery,

the gems are packed into little pouches

that are labeled, Made in India.

The mountain climber turns out to be an honest one.

After collecting the frozen fortune,

he descends the mountain and turns it into the police

in the town of Chamonix.

While the authorities are stunned by this find,

it doesn't take them very long to trace the origin

of these glacier gems.

The source is an Air India flight

from the mid 1960s.

Back on January 24, 1966,

Air India flight 101 is en route

from Mumbai to London,

with a layover in Geneva.

But 20 minutes away from the airport,

it slams into Mont Blanc.

The airline air crash

near the summit of Mont Blanc in subzero weather.

Tragically, had the plane been just 50 feet higher,

it would've cleared Mont Blanc.

Everyone onboard the plane dies.

It's 106 passengers and 11 crew members.

Also lost, the plane's cargo.

Immediately, search parties are dispatched to the site.

They find the crash creates this massive debris field

that's roughly a mile long.

They find mail and plane parts, human remains

among the wreckage.

But unfortunately, bad weather forces them

to scrap any recovery efforts.

While the official cause of the crash

is ruled as pilot error,

some believe it was no accident.

Onboard this flight was India's top nuclear scientist,

Homi Jehangir Bhabha.

He's a strong supporter of nuclear energy,

and he's known as the father of India's nuclear program.

Conspiracy theorists quickly latch on

to this part of the story and begin to argue

that this was an assassination plot orchestrated

by the CIA to cripple India's nascent nuclear program.

Most of the wreckage is actually still

on the mountainside today.

However, over the decades,

occasionally a climber would come across debris

from the crash, fragments from the plane,

shoes, and human remains.

In 2012, some climbers even discover a bag

labeled Diplomatic Mail.

But it doesn't have anything of value in it.

One of the climbers who discovers this says, quote,

"We were hoping for diamonds or at least a few gold ingots,

but instead we got soaking wet mail

and some Indian newspapers."

These are all things that you can expect to find

when you're trying to recover items from a plane crash.

But a year later,

when an entire box of jewels is found,

it's a complete surprise to everyone.

Nobody has any clue that they were even onboard

or who they could've belonged to.

An exhaustive investigation is launched.

French and Indian officials collaborate in an attempt

to solve the ultimate cold case mystery

of who owned these frozen valuables.

Finally, in 2021,

eight years after the jewels are discovered,

the search is called off.

With no discernible next of kin

to pass the riches onto,

the jewels are divided among the residents

of the town of Chamonix and the climber who found them.

The town's share is placed in an exhibit

for people to see.

But the climber's share,

$84,350 in their pocket.

The climber who turned in the jewels

is handsomely rewarded for his honesty,

proving that honesty is the best policy.

When most people think of buried treasure

the first thing that comes to mind is money.

But in 1908, one cowboy unearthed a whole lot more,

thanks to a terrible storm.

This is no ordinary thunderstorm.

Within just a few hours,

you have 14 inches of rain, which then caused

a five-foot flash flood to occur,

which then proceeds to wash away most of the town.

And it also carries, unfortunately, 17 people

to a watery grave.

When the skies clear, George McJunkin,

who's a former slave turned cowboy

and is now foreman of the Crow Foot Ranch,

rides out to assess the damage.

He sees a broken barbed wire fence

that was washed out by the flood.

So when he goes to repair it,

McJunkin notices something

that's sticking out of the ground.

He digs it out and it turns out to be bones.

Now, McJunkin's an experienced rancher,

so when he's looking at these bones,

he figures that they're probably bison bones.

It's clear, though, that these

are from no ordinary bison.

They are big, bigger than any bison he's ever seen.

McJunkin knows he's found something special.

And he tries his best

to bring it to the attention of others.

He corresponds with scientists and universities.

He approaches people who are interested specifically

in prehistoric animals.

But no one bites.

After years of trying to solve the mystery

of what these bones are,

sadly, McJunkin passes away on January 21, 1922

without any answers.

Two months later,

a pair of researchers McJunkin shared his find with

bring some of the bones

to the Colorado Museum of Natural History.

In 1926, four years after McJunkin's death,

the museum sends a team of paleontologists out

to the bone pit to formally excavate it at last.

The excavation reveals many more bones,

which they determine to be from a species

of extinct bison from the Ice Age called Bison antiquus.

At seven feet tall and 3,500 pounds,

Bison antiquus was

at least 25% bigger

than the modern bison.

It's an incredible discovery.

But what they find next is even more surprising.

They discover a spear point lodged

into the rib bone of one of the bison.

And this sends their heads spinning,

because this shows researchers and these paleontologists

that the bison were being hunted by human beings.

Up until this point, it was thought

that the earliest humans only arrived in North America

around 1000 BCE.

But Bison antiquus roamed the Earth around 9000 BCE.

This is proof that humans existed in North America

thousands of years earlier than previously thought.

Over the following decades,

many books and articles are written

about this anthropological treasure,

but virtually none credit Cowboy McJunkin for his work.

Then, finally, half a century after his passing,

historians begin to research

into the forgotten cowboy's contributions.

And in 2019, McJunkin is inducted

into the Hall of Great Westerners,

solidifying his role in the discovery.

Whether it's lucky horseshoes

or school kids finding Egyptian treasures,

being in the right place at the right time

can make you rich and also make history.

I'm Danny Trejo.

Thanks for watching "Mysteries Unearthed."