Original subtitles

[tense music]

- 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, a treasure trove of killer finds.

From a blood thirsty predator.

- It had lethal teeth,

each serrated like a bread knife

to saw and slice into their prey.

- [Danny] To an ancient tomb.

- Soon after, another team member suddenly passes away,

then a third and a fourth die in the same strange fashion.

- To a literal ticking time bomb.

- They immediately evacuate 20 homes in the neighborhood

and call the bomb squad.

- Join us now, because nothing stays hidden forever.

[dramatic music]

It's one of America's most loved national parks,

but underneath the beauty lies a killer,

one that gets discovered from space.

- In 1965, NASA begins a mission to map the surface

of the Earth from space.

They plan to use state-of-the-art cameras

mounted on satellites,

but to make sure the images they are getting are accurate,

NASA decides to make a control set of pictures

on the ground at Yellowstone.

- They're making this map of Yellowstone

so that they have a baseline.

And the person in charge, his name is Bob Christiansen.

- Yellowstone has the ideal geology to do this

because the park is just chockfull of geysers

and these natural pools,

all of which can test the real accuracy of these cameras.

- Because Christiansen is also a geologist,

the National Park Service also has him collect rock samples

that are later carbon dated.

- [Narrator] These rock samples reveal something strange.

- It turns out that most of the rock in Yellowstone

is made up of something called rhyolite,

which only occurs when you have lava flowing

or volcanic explosions.

But there are no active volcanoes in Yellowstone.

- Still, Christiansen's data doesn't lie.

The bulk of the park's geology is the result

of several massive eruptions over

the last two million years.

- There are hundreds of unique geological features

across the park.

So, Christiansen's first thought

is that these were the product of an ancient volcano chain

that has long since gone dormant.

- [Narrator] But when NASA's satellite mapping of the park

is finally finished in 1972,

Christensen is shocked by what the infrared pictures reveal.

- What the images tell him

is that the unique geological features

of Yellowstone were not, as he thought,

formed by an ancient chain of volcanoes,

but by a single super volcano.

- Of the over 1,000 volcanoes we know of on Earth,

only about 20 are super volcanoes,

and this is one of the biggest ever found.

- The biggest of these eruptions

took place two million years ago.

This eruption launched as much as 600 cubic miles

of red hot lava and rocks into the air.

This is an explosion 2,500 times bigger

than the Mount Saint Helens eruption.

- [Narrator] Then, Christiansen makes

an even more startling discovery.

- Even though it has been dormant

for a half a million years,

lava still flows in this massive supervolcano

underneath Yellowstone National Park.

- [Narrator] And in 2022,

scientists uncover even more alarming news.

- A study published in the Journal Science shows

that lava chambers under the park are rapidly filling.

- This combined with the fact

that Yellowstone has over 3,000 earthquakes a year

leads some to speculate

that the super volcano may be preparing to erupt once again.

- If the next eruption is anything like the last one,

it would spew enough debris into the sky

to block out the sun

in the western United States for decades,

leading to widespread famine and economic collapse.

- Considering the Yellowstone supervolcano

has remained dormant for over a half million years,

let us hope for another half million, at least.

- Imagine uncovering another Earth shattering find

from the air.

That's exactly what happened in 1978.

- A young geophysicist named Glen Penfield moves to Mexico

to work for an oil company

and he spends his time flying back

and forth across the nation using magnetic data

to pinpoint the place to build new oil wells.

- Within a few months,

he has flown over half the eastern coastline

with nothing to show for it.

All he finds are flat magnetic readings.

It all looks kind of the same, no black gold.

- But one day, Penfield sees these two magnetic lines

on his screen.

Both of them have a shallow dip in them,

which tells him that they're something strange

in the water down there.

So he follows these lines

and he discovers that these anomalies seem to get stronger

the farther he goes.

- [Narrator] Curious there might be more to these lines,

Penfield studies them a little closer.

- He convinces a few of his colleagues

to give him some old gravity mapping surveys

that date back to the 1940s.

They show anomalies,

just like what he's seeing in his surveys.

- [Narrator] When Penfield adds his new findings

to the map, it reveals something incredible.

- The strange readings fall in a concentric circle pattern

that creates a bullseye about 110 miles wide,

half on land and half over water.

- Then it just hits him.

As a kid, he had been fascinated with the moon

and its impact craters, and so he wonders,

could this be a giant impact crater from a meteor strike?

- Penfield presents his crater impact theory to his bosses

and then fellow colleagues at a geophysics conference,

and they all laugh it off as Glen's sky rock.

- Then, in 1990, 12 years after his initial discovery,

he gets a call out of the blue

from a grad student named Alan Hildebrand.

Hildebrand is writing a paper about the sudden extinction

of the dinosaurs millions of years ago,

and he thinks there could be a connection

to Glen's asteroid impact theory.

- [Narrator] Hildebrand tracks down a rare core sample

from the possible impact site in the Gulf of Mexico.

- And lo and behold, when they analyze the sample,

they discover an unusual form of rock called shocked quartz.

- [Narrator] Shocked quartz is formed

by intense pressure due to large scale impact events.

- That means this rock could only have been formed

by a massive asteroid.

- [Narrator] Finally, Penfield is vindicated.

- Penfield, Hildebrand,

and several other scientists publish their findings

in the Journal Geology.

- [Narrator] They call it the Chicxulub crater

after the seashore town where the magnetic anomalies

were first discovered.

- Subsequent testing finds that the Chicxulub asteroid

struck Earth 66 million years ago,

the same time the dinosaurs disappeared

from the fossil record.

- Scientists continue researching

and find that what happened after this giant space rock hit,

it's pretty terrifying.

- Fires raged across the globe,

a half mile tsunami crashed into the Americas,

and acid rain showered down for months on end.

It was truly biblical.

End of times kind of stuff.

- It didn't just kill all the dinosaurs,

but also 75% of all plant and animal life on Earth.

- Instead of an oil well,

Glen discovered something else truly astonishing,

proof that it was his sky rock

that nearly wiped out all life on Earth.

- Most of our jobs can be pretty dull,

but for one construction worker,

a routine dig takes an unexpected turn in 2016.

- Matt Bell and his crew

are doing some routine excavation work

at a construction site just outside of Danville, Arkansas.

As they dig, a rock solid ball rolls out of

the freshly broken soil into a ditch.

- One of the men examines it

and notices that it's pretty rusty.

The ball is about six inches in diameter,

so about the size of a large grapefruit,

and it's also pretty heavy, weighs around 30 pounds.

And he notices it's got this small stub on the side of it.

- It certainly doesn't look like much,

so the worker grabs it and tosses it,

and it hits the ground with a large thump.

But Bell thinks they might have found some type of artifact.

So, he picks it up and takes it home.

- And he drives the hour and a half back to his house

and when he gets back home,

he and his kids actually pressure wash the object.

- After some research online,

he thinks it might be a Civil War cannonball.

He puts it back in his car

and drive it a few miles to the nearby Civil War Museum.

- Bell tracks down the museum director

and excitedly shares the story of his find,

but the guy freaks out when Bell tries to hand him the ball.

- [Narrator] What has Bell unearthed

that has the museum director so scared?

- Turns out this is not a cannonball,

it's a Confederate landmine.

- The director pulls out

some photos and a replica to show Bell exactly

what he has found.

- Turns out that that little stub at the bottom

of this round object that was sticking out,

yeah, that was the pressure plate that sets off the mine

if someone were to step on it.

And remember,

Bell and his family pressure washed this object.

Consider them extremely, extremely lucky.

- [Narrator] They were also lucky in another way.

Confederate landmines are incredibly rare

and this is the first one ever found

west of the Mississippi.

- Regardless, the museum's director has no interest

in adding a potentially live landmine to their collection.

- So, Bell slowly puts the landmine back into his truck

and buckles it tightly in place.

It takes him nearly an hour

to make the normally 10 minute drive home from the museum,

white knuckling it through every bump and sharp turn.

- Once he's back in his house, he calls the police.

They immediately evacuate 20 homes in the neighborhood

and call the bomb squad.

- The bomb squad confirms

that this is a potentially deadly situation

and the only way to solve it is a controlled detonation.

Given the size of a landmine,

a safe detonation requires a space

of about nine football fields.

- They locate a suitable space at a nearby landfill,

and with a little C4,

the mine is safely detonated and destroyed.

- [Narrator] But not everyone is happy

about this explosive ending.

Local historians and archeologists are upset

because they believe a 150-year-old, rare item

from the Civil War era should have been preserved

and maintained for further study.

- Next, an even bigger blast from the past.

This one on a beach in Israel.

- In 1973, Marcel Mazliah starts working at a power plant

in northwest Israel right on the coast

of the Mediterranean Sea.

- He loves the beach,

so every day he walks to and from his job along the shore

and he picks up glass and seashells along the way.

- But on his walk on the beach one day,

Mazliah sees something a little bit unusual

from what he normally sees.

He sees an object that seems to just have been washed ashore

and water is still glistening on its surface.

- It's roughly the size of a baseball.

It's shaped like an acorn or a pomegranate,

and it's got a little cap on the top.

- There are deep grooves and carvings all around the object.

It's heavy and he believes it might be made of metal

or perhaps some kind of clay,

but he thinks it's very, very old.

- But he can't figure out how to open it

and he's not sure what it is, so he just

tucks it in his pocket and continues on his walk.

After work that evening,

he puts the trinket in his collection

with other things he's picked up on the beach over the years.

- [Narrator] The mysterious object stays hidden

in Mazliah's collection for 40 years.

Then, in 2016, he passes away

and his family comes to clean out the house.

- When the family arrives,

they find this puzzling seed-like container

that's just been tucked away among Mazliah's possessions.

And just like Mazliah

when he first came across this item,

his family has no idea what this object is.

They know that it looks old,

but they really have no idea what to do with it,

so they call the Israel Antiquities Authority

to get a closer look.

- [Narrator] What the experts reveal is shocking.

- It's actually a clay hand grenade

that dates back to the crusades between the 11th

and 13th centuries.

So, unknowingly,

their father, for the past 40 years has housed

this dangerous piece of medieval artillery.

- [Narrator] Though hand grenades may seem modern,

this kind of weapon has been around since

the eighth century.

- These grenades were more akin

to a modern day Molotov cocktail.

The soldier would fill it

with this sticky liquid called Greek fire,

which is similar to napalm.

Would close it up, light a fuse,

and then toss this object at the enemy.

- The exact recipe of Greek fire is still a mystery today,

but many researchers believe

that it was a highly flammable mixture

of pine resin, naphtha, quicklime, and sulfur.

Historical accounts indicate

that Greek fire was basically impossible to extinguish,

it even burned under water.

- [Narrator] Since this grenade could still be active,

it's moved very carefully to a research facility.

- Fortunately, the researchers only find trace amounts

of the explosive in Mazliah's device.

Today, the grenade is held safely

in the Israel Antiquities Authority's collection,

and it also serves to us as a reminder

of the dangers of war, and also beach going.

- You know the saying, "Curiosity killed the cat."

Well, one curious diver completely ignores the warning

when he comes across a strange, underwater hole.

- It's 1985 and a man named Henri Cosquer

is exploring the waters of Cape Morgiou south of Marseille.

Around 100 feet down,

he sees a hole in a cliffside just big enough

for him to swim into.

- He swims into the hole and he sees that it curves upwards

into the darkness,

and he realizes that the hole is the entrance

to an underground tunnel that's over 200 feet long.

- The farther he swims, the narrower the passage gets.

It's also full of stalagmites,

so one wrong move and he could end up trapped,

and so he has to abandon his exploration.

- [Narrator] Over the next few years,

Cosquer keeps the tunnel a secret,

but eventually he realizes if he's going to explore deeper,

there's safety in numbers.

- In 1991, he returns with a few fellow divers.

Cosquer leads them through the tunnel until they end up

in a large cave,

and that is when he notices a painting on the wall,

and then another, and another,

and the walls are covered in them.

- Many of the images appear to be animals, including horses,

penguins, and even a jellyfish.

- [Narrator] Then Cosquer finds something truly astonishing.

- He spots a hand print,

it looks like it's been stenciled into the cave wall,

only one of the fingers is missing.

- As they look closer,

they begin to see loads of these mutilated hand images

on the walls of the cave.

So they take a bunch of photos and head for the surface,

- But before Cosquer can share his discovery,

four other divers find the cave.

- These divers are totally under equipped

for such a dangerous dive.

They have no spare tanks, no extra regulator,

and no safety line, and they quickly run into trouble.

- Their flippers begin to stir up some silt,

which completely obscures their vision.

They can't see each other

and they lose all sense of direction.

- [Narrator] Tragically, three of the divers drown,

so a spooked Cosquer hands over his photos of the cave

to French authorities.

- And they send a team of their navy divers

to now go and explore this cave.

They begin to catalog the paintings on the wall

and they count a total of over 500 different cave paintings.

- Carbon dating reveals

that the oldest of the images dates back 27,000 years

and that people return to the cave over and over again,

adding to this art for over 14,000 years.

- [Narrator] But it's the images of hands

that get the most attention.

- Scientists first thought is that the hands were mutilated,

but after the discovery

of similar hand stencils in caves nearby,

they postulate that it might be

a type of visual code communication

or some kind of very ornate picture language.

- [Narrator] It turns out to be the oldest known example

of written language ever found,

by over 20,000 years.

- Incredibly, researchers believe

that the cave once held four or five times as many images

as it does today,

that is before rising sea levels washed them all away.

Sadly, it's estimated that the imagery that still remains

may be washed away within 14 years.

- Now, a team of artists and scientists are working

to recreate all of this art in a museum in Marseille

in an attempt to preserve these amazing unearthed mysteries

before they are lost forever.

- Henri Cosquer isn't the only person

to make a killer find in the water.

Check out our next story of a fisherman

who reels in something even more shocking.

- In 1991, Captain Skeets Frank pulls up

to his favorite fishing spot about 60 miles off

the New Jersey coast for some fishing.

On this particular day, it's a bit foggy out,

so he fires up the sonar

to see where the fish might potentially be underwater.

- So, instead of seeing lots of little dots of tuna

on his sonar, he sees one green blob.

It's about 190 feet long and very deep in the water,

and he has no clue what it might be.

- Captain Frank heads back to shore

and he tells some local divers when he gets back to land

about his discovery.

And these guys,

they don't need any excuse for any underwater exploring.

So, on September 2nd,

they load up a boat and head to the spot.

- They take a six-hour boat ride out

to the secret fishing spot.

When they arrive, John Chatterton, the lead diver,

jumps into the icy water.

- Chatterton slowly descends about 240 feet.

It's about the limit for scuba gear.

And out of the darkness, a shape begins to emerge.

- As he gets closer,

he realizes he's looking at a jumbled mess

of metal and wires.

Eventually, he sees what looks like a hatch.

He slowly spins the wheel, opens it up,

and pops his head in.

And then he sees a dark cigar-like shape

that he realizes is a torpedo.

- [Narrator] Chatterton's discovered the wreckage

of a very unusual submarine.

- As he continues exploring,

he finds bowls marked with swastikas.

This isn't just any submarine,

it's a German U-boat.

- [Narrator] During World War II,

German U-boats sunk around 2,700 allied ships

and merchant vessels.

But what was this one doing in New Jersey?

- Researchers soon discover that in February of 1945,

this sub, U-869,

was in the Atlantic attacking shipping lanes

off the coast of New Jersey.

It was ordered to go to Gibraltar

but somehow never got the message.

Its final destination would be the ocean floor.

- [Narrator] And it wasn't the only one.

- During World War II,

the allies sunk over 700 U-boats.

That represents 75% of the entire German fleet,

dropping their crews to a watery grave.

This gave the U-boats the name "iron coffins."

- [Narrator] Unfortunately, this iron coffin continues

to pose a risk to this day.

- With the vessels still holding live torpedoes,

raising the wreck would be a costly

and potentially even more deadly endeavor.

So, for now, the US Coast Guard has elected

to let U-869 lie on the ocean floor

where hopefully it won't claim any more souls.

- Imagine taking a walk by the water.

You might expect to find a shell or two.

What you probably don't expect is unearthing a monster.

- Christmas time, 2008,

Sandra and John De Groot

are walking along the Bow River near their farm

in Hays, Alberta,

and they notice something piercing through the ice.

- When they get closer,

they realize that it is some kind of fossil

and they brought some hot water to make tea,

so they use that to free it up and get it up out of the ice.

- When they finally get it out,

it looks like a piece of jaw with several long teeth.

They also find several other pieces of bone in the ice,

so they grab all the bones they can and they take it home.

- [Narrator] For the next two years,

the De Groots display the fossils in a glass table.

- In 2010, paleontologist, Donald Henderson,

pays a visit to Sandra De Groot's school.

She mentions that she

and her husband might have some items of interest,

invites him over.

He comes to take a look.

- What he sees on the coffee table stuns him.

Not only are they actually dinosaur fossils,

but the jawbones are of a specimen

he's completely unfamiliar with.

- [Narrator] Henderson persuades the De Groots

to donate the jaw fossils to the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

- At the museum, Don and his colleagues are able

to examine the fossils even further.

They believe the fossils belong to the daspletosaurus,

a type of tyrannosaurus that existed in the northern parts

of North America roughly 70 million years before.

- The discovery's cool, but it's not that uncommon.

The museum already has several daspletosaurus specimens

in its collection,

so the De Groot's specimen is wrapped up,

shelved into a collection, and pretty much forgotten about.

- Then in 2018, a graduate student, Jared Voris,

he's working on his thesis on the tyrannosaur.

He's snooping around the museum

and he comes across the De Groots' fossilized jawbone.

- He notices two details that others have missed,

unusual vertical ridges along the upper jaw

and a distinctive oval-shaped cheekbone.

What the De Groots found is no daspletosaurus jaw.

- He discovers that these fossils actually come from

a completely unknown species of tyrannosaurus.

This particular fossil is from a dinosaur

that lived 79 million years ago, and that makes it

the oldest tyrannosaur fossil ever discovered.

- [Narrator] Scientists named

the new species thanatotheristes,

Greek for "the reaper of death."

And this ancestor of the infamous T. rex

was just as deadly as its more famous relative.

- This dinosaur was a true killer, an apex predator,

about three tons and and over 30 feet long.

- It had lethal, massive teeth,

grew up three inches in length,

each serrated like a bread knife to saw

and slice into their prey.

- It's thought that this dinosaur

would've hunted plant eating dinosaurs,

eating up to about half a ton of meat a week.

Its jaws were so long and wide,

this thing could eat a human in about a bite and a half.

- Ultimately, the De Groots do receive something

for their discovery of this new species.

The full name given to the dinosaur

is thanatotheristes degrootorum

as a tribute to John and Sandra.

- [Narrator] 4,700 miles away,

another couple uncovers something even more disturbing

on a hike.

- On September 19th, 1991,

German couple, Erika and Helmut Simon

are on a much needed vacation in Austria.

They're avid hikers and they are excited

for a challenging adventure in the Otzal Alps,

a region of the Italian and Austrian border,

- After a long day's hike, the couple begins their descent,

so they make their way through the gully

and Helmut spots something strange

jutting out from the ice.

- At first, they think maybe it's a backpack,

pieces of camping gear, but it's not.

It's something far more gruesome.

It turns out to be a human body

that's half buried in the ice.

- The corpse lies face down with his arms extended

as if it's reaching for something

and the Simons believe they've come across the victim

of an accident,

a climber or mountaineer who had recently fallen.

- However, when they look closer,

they notice some strange marks on the body

that look a bit suspicious.

This may be no accident.

The couple has a camera with them and just one photo left,

so they use their last picture to capture

what appears to be a crime scene.

- [Narrator] The Simons head straight to the cops

to report it.

- The following day,

the police make their long hike up the glacier back to where

the body was found.

Their main goal is to free the body from the ice

to perform an autopsy.

- The ice is frozen solid and it will not budge.

It takes three days for the authorities

to excavate the body from the ice.

Once the remains are finally freed,

they're sent to Innsbruck, Austria for examination.

- News of the discovery spreads quickly.

A camera crew rushes to the glacier to film the crime scene.

A local journalist dubs the remains Otzi,

after the local mountain, range and the name sticks.

- When investigators carbon date material from Otzi,

it turned out he died over 5,000 years ago.

- [Narrator] That makes Otzi the oldest

and most well-preserved natural mummy ever found in Europe.

- He's so well preserved

that his last meal is still in his stomach, wild goat meat.

- While Otzi may not have been a recent victim,

it turns out he may well have been murdered.

Strange marks upon his body could be arrow wounds.

- And it seems Otzi froze in his condition

as he was running for his life,

which basically closes the book on what may be

the coldest case of all time.

- Our next killer find happened somewhere even more remote,

the Arctic Ocean.

- On August 5th, 1930,

a Norwegian seal hunting ship anchors off the coast

of White Island in the North Atlantic.

And from the ship, hunters pour out in search of their game.

- [Narrator] After a long day's hunt,

two members of the team pause to take a water break

by a small stream.

That's when they see something strange.

- They notice something shimmering in the distance.

So, the men decide to investigate.

When they get closer, they see it's a boat,

an entire boat that's hidden underneath the snow.

- Searching the surrounding area,

the hunters find the remains of a campsite

and a dilapidated shelter.

Inside the shelter, they find a kerosene stove, an ax,

Swedish flag, a diary,

and a 15 pound camera

containing 200 undeveloped photographs.

- And that's when the men make one last discovery,

two human skeletons picked to the bone,

still wearing their arctic furs.

- [Narrator] On a boat hook,

the hunters find an engraving that reads,

"Andree's polar expedition, 1896."

- The crew returns all of the materials they can find

to the ship.

Once back in Norway,

the diaries are examined and the photographs are developed.

Together, they reveal the harrowing final days

of a dramatic polar expedition launched

over 30 years earlier.

- [Narrator] In the 1800s,

brave explorers looking for fame and fortune headed

into the Arctic to attempt to be the first

to reach the North Pole.

One of them is a famous Swedish hot air balloonist

named Salomon August Andree.

- In 1895, he ultimately announced it is possible,

plausible, and feasible for a balloon to travel

to the North Pole.

Now, it sounded like insanity.

People had tried and failed, but not in a balloon.

- On July 11th, 1897,

the Andree Polar expedition launches from Stockholm

on a wave of patriotism and hot air.

- The expedition makes headlines all over the world

and everyone is poised for their return.

However, the global audience never hears from

nor sees Andree ever again.

And everyone assumes that this mission,

like all the others before it, has ended in failure.

- [Narrator] So what did happen to Andree

and his hot air balloon?

According to the diary, the trouble starts on day three.

- Ice begins to form on the balloon,

forcing it to come plummeting down to Earth.

They ultimately make a crash landing on an ice floe.

Luckily, every member of the expedition survives the crash.

- The balloon is now completely unusable

and the men have no idea where they are.

And after making camp for a week on the ice sheet,

they realize that they have to find warmer land soon

for any hopes of survival.

- They build a boat out of balloon scraps,

stow their gear on board,

and set out using makeshift paddles and oars.

They drift for five long days

before ultimately landing on White Island.

- They actually end up surviving for several months

until at one point, all the men succumb to stomach cramps,

intestinal problems, diarrhea, and shortly thereafter,

all three men are dead.

- The final entries in Andree's diary are indecipherable.

No one knows for sure

how the men met their chilling end.

Theories include parasitic worms to eating bad meat,

to carbon monoxide poisoning from the camp stove.

- The seal hunter's discovery brings some measure of closure

to the story of one of the most dangerous

to the story of one of the most dangerous

and daring expeditions in human history.

- Today, the idea of ancient curses

may seem like pure superstition,

but one discovery accidentally revealed

the real life science behind a killer curse.

- In 1973, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla,

Archbishop of Krakow,

commissions polish researchers to restore the tomb

of King Casimir IV and his queen, Elizabeth Austria.

In turn, in 1492 and 1505,

this restoration will be the first disturbance

of the royal couple in nearly five centuries.

- A 12-man team begins to work on April 13th,

prying open the tomb

and pulling out the rotting wood from inside.

The event is big news in Poland

where people become obsessed with the medieval king,

just like the opening

of Tutankhamun's tomb half a century earlier.

- [Narrator] After King Tut's tomb was opened in 1922,

nine members of the team went on to die

under mysterious circumstances,

including George Herbert,

the Earl of Carnarvon who sponsored the excavation,

and a radiologist who, after X-raying the mummy,

passes away three days later.

- One of the Polish researchers even notes

the striking similarity between the restoration of this tomb

and the opening of King Tut's tomb

and jokes about a possible curse.

- [Narrator] Soon, however,

the Polish team's jokes of a curse are no laughing matter.

- A few days after the tomb is opened,

one of the researchers starts to get sick.

He's wheezing, he has a cough and some chest pain,

and he has a fever.

[researcher coughing]

When he suddenly passes away,

the doctors are scrambling to diagnose the cause of death,

but they can't figure out what it is.

- Soon after, another team member

develops the same symptoms and suddenly passes away.

The doctors think it may have been a stroke,

but then a third and a fourth die

in the same strange fashion.

As panic rises,

the doctor thinks instead of a stroke,

it may have been an infection.

- [Narrator] Dr. Boleslaw Smyk, a microbiologist,

has a different idea.

He takes culture samples inside of the tomb

and is shocked to discover deadly fungal spores

known as aspergillus flavus.

- Aspergillus flavus is a highly toxic

and carcinogenic fungus that attacks the liver

and presents symptoms similar to asthma,

which explains the chest pains

and the coughing the researchers suffered

before their sudden deaths.

- Scientists wonder if this discovery could be the reason

for all of those other strange deaths

that have been attributed to cursed burial sites.

So, in 1999, a German microbiologist

analyzes 40 mummies

and finds aspergillus flavus on many of them.

- Most spores are able to survive for thousands of years.

So, when a tomb is opened,

the researchers inhale these spores,

and once they're in the body, they begin to wreak havoc.

So, it's a plausible explanation

of why there are sudden deaths associated

with certain tomb excavations like King Casimir IV

and like King Tut.

- But this story may never have made it out of Poland

and into the international press,

except for one interesting detail.

The Archbishop Karol Wojtyla,

who commissioned the conservationists

to unseal King Casimir IV's tomb,

soon bursts onto the world stage as Pope John Paul II.

- From a deadly supervolcano to a Civil War landmine,

killer finds can be anywhere,

just waiting to be discovered.

I'm Danny Trejo.

Thanks for watching Mysteries Unearthed.