All language subtitles for Mysteries Unearthed with Danny Trejo S01E07 1080p WEB h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

[dramatic music]

- [Danny] Mysteries can
be buried anywhere.

Under the earth.

[volcano exploding]

Beneath the sea.

[plane whooshing]

Or even right
under our own feet.

And when we stumble
upon them, sometimes

what we find can change history.

[upbeat music]

Tonight, beastly discoveries,

from mythical monsters.

- He realizes he may
have the holy grail

of maritime mysteries
in his hands.

- To scary barbarians.

- They're the original
weapons of mass destruction.

They were like a mixture of
a 19th century cavalry horse

mixed with a modern day tank.

- To one of the deadliest
animals on the planet.

- Wild hippos only
exist in Africa,

yet here there's a
whole herd of them,

more than 5,000 miles
across the ocean,

and they can't
believe what they see.

[hippo roaring]

- Join us now, because
nothing stays hidden forever.

[dramatic music]

When you think Arctic, you
probably think freezing,

but one recent day, when
the temperature hits 95,

something unexpected
gets unleashed.

[tense music]

- In a small town in
northwest Siberia,

a farmer is surprised
to find the carcass

of one of his reindeer.

You know, it's not unusual.

Every now and then
an animal will die

of some kind of natural causes,

but over the next month,
other local farmers watch

as more and more reindeer,
livestock get sick and die.

[intense music]

- In all, over 1,200
reindeer end up dying.

At first, the
villagers chalk it up

to the stress the
animals are undergoing

due to that summer's
unusually high temperatures,

but then, suddenly, the
villagers start getting sick.

- [Narrator] Locals develop
high fevers and painful sores.

- 90 villagers fall critically
ill and are hospitalized.

Tragically, one sick child dies.

- Doctors are
completely baffled.

They're running blood
tests and throat swabs,

but every test that they run
ends up coming back negative.

- [Narrator] Then finally,
one test comes back positive

and the result is shocking.

- It's bacillus and thoracis,

but we know it more
commonly as anthrax.

[tense music]

- Most people think of anthrax
as a biological weapon,

but it actually occurs naturally

in soils throughout the world.

When animals like
reindeer graze,

they kick up the spores
and form little dust clouds

and then the animals can inhale
this and become infected.

- Once it's in the body,
the bacteria grows quickly.

It causes fevers and
difficulty breathing.

And after an
infected animal dies,

its body decomposes,
spilling even more

anthrax spores right
back into the earth.

- The spores can sit
there for decades,

like this ticking time bomb,

just waiting for its
next unfortunate host.

Even with treatment, the
fatality rate in humans

can be as high as around 80%.

- [Narrator] As
government officials rush

to figure out the source,

they discover that
in the early 1900s,

Siberia was ravaged by a series

of terrible anthrax outbreaks.

- More than a
million reindeer died

with their infected carcasses
sprawled out everywhere

across this tundra.

- Some of those remains were
frozen in the permafrost,

essentially refrigerating
the dead deer

and the bacteria inside of them.

- But then starting
in the year 2011,

the area has five years
of unusually warm summers.

- And the extreme heat begins
to melt the permafrost,

exposing dormant anthrax spores.

- [Narrator] To
contain the outbreak,

officials scour
the tundra burning

thousands of infected
reindeer carcasses

and vaccinating tens of
thousands of living reindeer.

- Gradually, this works

and the number of new
cases begins to slow

and then eventually
completely stop.

- But it's very likely

that more pathogens lie
frozen under the Arctic ice.

Researchers have found pieces
of the 1918 Spanish flu virus

in bodies buried in mass
graves in Alaska's tundra.

There's also likely smallpox

and bubonic plague trapped
in the ice in Siberia.

- If rising temperatures
continue to melt the permafrost,

it is very likely that animals
and humans will be exposed

to these ancient pathogens
which modern humans

have never had
exposure to before.

As one researcher puts
it, this is Pandora's box.

[tense music]

- While residents in the
Arctic fear deadly outbreaks,

in Connecticut, it's the undead

that send locals into a panic.

- In 1990, a young
boy is playing outside

with some friends in the rural
Connecticut town of Griswold.

- As the boy slides down a hill,

he bumps into something
sticking out of the rocks.

He moves the dirt to the
side to look at what it is,

and suddenly, two human skulls
are staring back at him.

[tense music]

- [Narrator] The boy heads
home to tell his mother,

who calls the police.

- Investigators
find more skeletons.

Some of them laying in the
remnants of wooden boxes.

They can tell that
these bones are old.

This isn't a job for a coroner.

They need to call
in an archeaologist.

- [Narrator] Connecticut
state archeaologist,

Nick Bellantoni, comes to
the site to investigate

and determines that
they've stumbled upon

a forgotten graveyard
from the early 1800s.

- Bellantoni and his team
discovered 29 graves in total,

but one of those graves
is distinctly different.

It's covered with heavy rocks

as if they didn't want
anyone to dig there.

- When the team lifts
the heavy stones,

they find a coffin with
brass tacks nailed into it

that spell out JB 55.

- They find that
the skeleton inside

has been totally rearranged.

The rib cage has been crushed,
the skull's been removed

and then turned around
facing downward.

The thigh bones are crisscrossed

with the skull in the
symbol of the Jolly Roger.

The old pirate flag.

- The condition of the grave
reminds one of the researchers

of scary stories he
heard as a child.

Campfire tales about
a wave of terror

that overtook Connecticut
in the early 1800s.

It was known as the Great
New England Vampire Panic.

- Back then when healthy people

would find themselves
becoming ill,

turning gaunt and pale and
even coughing up blood,

it was speculated
that their blood

was being drained
at night by vampires

that rose from the dead.

- Villagers would go out

and dig up the grave of
the suspected vampire,

and rearrange the
bones to guarantee

that the vampire
could not crawl out.

- [Narrator] When investigators
take a closer look

at JB's body, they get
more insight into why

his neighbors suspected he
could have been a vampire.

- One answer might be
the coral-like lesions

discovered on his rib bones.

These are the telltale
signs of tuberculosis,

a disease that causes
ulcers in the lungs.

- You cough up blood,
you waste away,

you become pale and gaunt.

Your gums recede,

so your teeth might
actually look like fangs.

- [Narrator] In 2019,
almost 30 years

after JB's body is found,

DNA and genealogical analysis

finally reveal
his true identity.

- JB was a man named John Barber

who died in his mid 50s,

which probably explains the 55

that was spelled out
in tacks on his grave.

- Signs of stress on
his bones indicate

that he worked in manual
labor, probably as a farmer.

- Ironically, his top
front teeth were missing,

so he really
couldn't bite anyone.

To this day,

the discovery of John
Barber's grave is considered

compelling proof that vampires,

or at least vampire hunters,

really did lurk in the
cemeteries of New England.

- Back in 1938,

a fishing boat captain in
South Africa invites a friend

to check out his catch.

What she finds ends up
shocking scientists everywhere.

- It's just before
Christmas in 1938

in East London, South Africa,

and a woman named
Marjorie Courtnay-Latimer

is the curator of a small
natural history museum.

She is with a friend of hers
that is a commercial fisherman

and she often will go
through his hall to find cool

and unique animal specimens
to display in her museum.

- She sticks her
hands in these layers

of these slimy sea creatures

and she starts to dig around
when something catches her eye.

It's this five-foot
long bright blue fish

with these four fins that
kind of look like arms.

- The fishermen with 30 years

of professional
fishing experience

cannot identify this fish.

- [Narrator] Marjorie
is also baffled,

but determined to figure out

what type of species
this unusual creature is.

- She wants to show this
specimen to a fish expert

that she knows.

However, he is gone
for the holiday

and won't return for weeks.

- Exposure to the sun is
already starting to change

the color of the fish
from blue to gray,

and she's becoming really
eager to preserve it,

so she calls a
local taxidermist.

This is the only way to save it.

- [Narrator] Eight weeks
later, the fish expert returns

and is shocked by what he sees.

- That fish actually turns
out to be a known species.

It's called a coelacanth,

and it was thought that this
particular species had died out

around 65 million years ago,

right alongside the dinosaurs.

- [Narrator] While this
coelacanth is the first found,

it's far from the last.

Over the next several decades,

experts uncover and study
more than 300 in the wild,

and they learn
something remarkable.

- Scientists eventually realized
that they had a unique way

of locomoting in the ocean.

Instead of swimming with
primarily tail motion,

as most bony fish do today,

the coelacanths swims
using some paddling

of its front and back legs,

almost as though
it's sort of wading

or walking through the water.

- Some scientists speculate
that coelacanth is the ancestor

to the first vertebrates
to crawl out of the water.

Thus the ancestors of
modern land animals.

- And actually, coelacanths
are genetically linked

with all other tetrapods.

So anything in the horse family,

anything in the feline family,

and yes, even us.

- [Narrator] To this day,

Marjorie Courtnay-Latimer's
discovery

is known as the zoological
find of the century.

- And what's even
more amazing is

that had it not been for
Marjorie's determination

to preserve and
to save this fish,

it is possible that
it could have ended up

on somebody's table for
Christmas dinner in 1938.

- Rediscovering an ancient
species is truly incredible,

but what if you
found a sea monster

that's not supposed to
exist, and is actually real?

- As dawn breaks on a
small Danish village,

down the beach, a crowd has
gathered around something

that has been
washed up overnight.

A strange creature
lies dead on the sand.

- It's massive.

It has sort of an
amorphous blob of a body,

two giant cloudy eyes, a
bony beak that resembles

that of a bird, and it has
10 long arms with openings

that resemble mouths
with hooked sharp teeth.

- To the villagers, this
looks like a sea monster,

and to some, it looks
like a specific monster,

the mythical kraken.

[dramatic music]

- [Narrator]
According to legend,

the kraken is an enormous
multi-armed beast

that has terrorized the
ocean for centuries.

It was infamous for
smashing boats to pieces

and dragging sailors
to a watery grave.

- Kraken or not,
the villagers know

that this massive carcass
is stinking up the beach.

A few fishermen cut off
some pieces to use as bait

and they bury the rest.

- But someone in the village
takes a souvenir, its beak.

- Three years later,
the beak is gifted

to a Norwegian scientist,
Japetus Steenstrup.

He is fully aware

of the stories about
the bloodthirsty kraken.

- So when Steenstrup
gets his hands

on what may be a piece
of an actual kraken,

he realizes he may
have the holy grail

of maritime mysteries
in his hands.

- He immediately
notices the similarity

between the beak he's received

and the beak of another
animal, a squid.

Squids use their beaks
to pulverize their prey

before they eat them.

- The description
of the sea monster

from the beach also reminds
Steenstrup of squids.

Both have unusually large
eyes and 10 limbs in total.

- And in certain species,

the suckers have small
tooth-like hooks inside of them

to create a better grip.

- Steenstrup declares the
world that he's discovered

a new genus of squid,

architeuthis, the giant squid.

This takes the
myth of the kraken

and it moves it into
the reality of science.

- [Narrator] But does one
beak and a secondhand story

really prove the existence
of a giant killer squid?

Debate in the scientific
community continues until 1873.

- In Portugal Bay, Newfoundland,

two men and a boy are
out in a fishing boat

when they spy something
floating in the water,

this sort of large
unidentifiable mass.

So they use a pole
with a hook on it

to pull the objects closer.

- As the point of the
hook pierces the creature,

it roars to life,
charges the boat,

and slings a massive
tentacle over the side.

- The young member
of the fishing crew

grabs their tackle axe

and cuts off part
of the tentacle.

After which the creature
pulls back into the sea.

- The men then bring this
19-foot long tentacle

back to the mainland and they
give it to a local reverend

who has an interest in biology.

- [Narrator] Then
one month later,

another local fishing boat
finds an entire giant squid

tangled in its nets.

The reverend buys
the squid for $10

and documents the
discovery in a photograph.

- This is the first
ever complete specimen

of the giant squid
recovered from nature.

It's evidence that

the mythical kraken
may indeed be real.

- And it makes you wonder,

what other mythical
creatures actually exist

in the depths of the briny deep?

[water bubbling]

- Picture this, it's
2007 in rural Colombia

and you're fishing on
a river with friends.

When you cast your
line, you hear a roar

and see a huge beast
swimming right at you.

- This beast is nothing
short of terrifying

and they've never
seen anything like it.

It's huge, big, bulbous
body, massive head,

beady eyes, and
massive, sharp tusks.

- The villagers
report the incident

to the Ministry of Environment,

and within weeks, the
ministry is flooded

with more calls of
sightings of these beasts.

- [Narrator] The government
sends a wildlife expert

to investigate the area

and he's shocked
at what he sees.

- He identifies it immediately.

It's a hippopotamus.

[dramatic music]
[hippo growling]

- Wild hippos only
exist in Africa,

or at least that's
supposed to be true.

Yet here, there's a
whole herd of them

more than 5,000 miles
across the ocean

in South America.

- Hippos are mostly
gentle herbivores.

Unless they feel threatened,

that's when they become

one of the most dangerous
animals to humans.

- Hippos kill hundreds
of people in Africa

every single year,

far more than shark attacks.

These beasts can run at
least 20 miles per hour,

and hippos have a bite that
can tear a human body in half.

- [Narrator] So how exactly
did a herd of hippos

end up swimming in
a Colombian river?

- Turns out that their
origins can be traced

to hippos owned by the
notorious drug lord,

Pablo Escobar.

The Colombian cocaine kingpin
amassed a huge fortune

that he used to build
himself a fortified compound,

including a full zoo.

He had zebras, rhinos,
kangaroos, ostriches,

and four hippos.

- [Narrator] After his death
in a police shootout in 1993,

the Colombian government
seizes Escobar's property

and ships most of his animals

to local zoos, but
not the hippos.

- It was believed
that the hippos

were far too
dangerous to release,

so they figured they would
just leave the hippos

inside the high walls
of the compound.

- But the hippos escape and
wander 65 miles down river.

[dramatic music]
[hippo roaring]

With no natural predators,
the hippo population explodes.

- In the last 30 years,
those four hippos multiply

to a herd of around 200.

- Hippos are an
invasive species.

They eat up loads of vegetation
that's normally reserved

for the indigenous
species there,

and they drastically drop the
oxygen levels in the river

with their waste.

- [Narrator] But recent
research suggests their impact

might not be all bad.

- [Adam] Thousands of years ago,

animals like the large
armored armadillo

or the large headed llama
would graze in those areas.

- This kept the
ecosystem in balance

but ended with the
end of the ice age

and human intervention.

- Some researchers suggest

that these hippos fill
the niche once held

by those native species,

so it turns out their presence

could actually
restore the landscape

to what it was like
thousands of years ago.

- It's one thing
to see a huge beast

hunting someplace unusual,
but how about finding one

that died out 10,000 years ago?

[pensive music]
[wolf howling]

- Pavel Efimov is
trudging along the banks

of an icy river in
Yakutia, Siberia

scouring for mammoth ivory.

He's waited until midsummer
to begin his search

because it's a little bit
easier to dig into the ground.

- It's hard work in
a harsh environment,

but it's got its rewards.

A single tusk can
fetch up to $20,000,

so just a couple can have
Efimov set up for years.

- On this day, he's not having
any luck, so he decides,

"Okay, I'm gonna
abort and go home."

But as he decides to leave, he
sees what looks like a clump

of fur sticking
up out of the ice.

- Efimov freezes over
and starts digging.

It's definitely not a tusk.

It seems to be some
sort of animal jaw,

but its teeth are much
smaller than a mammoth's.

- He chips away at the ice

and he discovers it's
a giant severed head.

[dramatic music]

- At first, it looks like a dog,

but upon closer
inspection he realizes

that it's a wolf's head.

This head is incredibly well
preserved and it is gigantic.

- [Narrator] The find reminds
Efimov of a fearsome beast

that when extinct
10,000 years ago.

[wolf howling]
The direwolf.

- At six feet long
and 175 pounds,

the direwolf was approximately
the size of a man,

but much more powerful.

Its bite alone was strong
enough to take down prey

many times its size,
like mastodons and bison.

- So Efimov takes the
head home with him

and he gets in contact
with the Republic of Sakha,

Academy of Sciences.

- [Narrator] Efimov
hands over the head

to a biologist who's
stunned by what he sees.

- When he measures the
skull, it's 16 inches long,

much bigger than any
modern wolf head.

- The fur is so well preserved
that the scientist thinks

that there is no way this
thing is 10,000 years old,

and so they send some samples
away for carbon dating.

It turns out, he was right.

It's not 10,000 years old.

It's 40,000 years old.

- [Narrator] While the
time period still lines up

with when direwolves
roam the Earth,

none have ever been
found in this area.

- After a lot of testing,

it turns out that this isn't
the head of a direwolf,

but it's a similar species
of Pleistocene wolf

that preyed on large animals.

It's the first remains
found of a well-preserved,

fully grown wolf from
the Pleistocene era,

and this ancient find shows us

that this wolf was much bigger

and much deadlier than
previously thought.

[wolf growling]

- In July of 1979,
Walter and Ruth Roman

are searching for gold
on their mining claim

outside of Fairbanks, Alaska.

In an effort to cut
through the permafrost,

they use a high-pressure
hydraulic hose

that acts like a blade to
cut through the frozen earth.

- The water cuts through
layer after layer of icy mud,

but then suddenly they
see something shining

in the sunlight.

- This isn't gold, it looks
like a pair of hooves.

And then they see
these two huge legs.

It appears to be some
type of massive animal.

- But the strangest
thing is its skin.

It has a blue hue, like
sort of like the color

of the chalk that you use
at the head of a pool cue.

- [Narrator] The Romans
call a local university

and they send paleontologist
Dale Guthrie to the site.

- He realizes he is looking at
a fully intact steppe bison.

A species of bison that is
thought to have gone extinct

tens of thousands
of years prior.

- And it's so perfectly
preserved by the permafrost

that its skin and
muscle are still intact.

- From the blue
coloring of the skin,

it reminds him of the blue ox

from the old Paul
Bunyan folklore.

So they decide to
nickname it "Blue Babe".

- It's an extraordinary find,

but they still have to
figure out how to get it

out of the permafrost.

- Ultimately, they decide
to let the summer thaw

do the work for them.

- Except there's one problem.

The sun is thawing the carcass
and this can cause it to rot,

but the head is still
stuck in the ice.

- The team has no choice

but to decapitate the
bison, refreeze its body,

and come back later
to retrieve the head.

- [Narrator] Eventually,
the ice releases

the head and neck with
all the pieces in place.

Guthrie and his team
take a closer look

at the blue bison in his lab.

- It's an adult male

and it's even more
intact than they thought.

It actually still has
blood in its veins

and marrow in its bones.

- [Narrator] Even
more incredible,

carbon dating reveals the
beast is over 50,000 years old.

But why is its skin blue?

- It turns out
that the bison skin

naturally sheds a phosphate,

and when it reacts with the
iron in the soil around it,

it creates a mineral
called vivianite.

- When vivianite is
exposed to oxygen,

it turns somewhat bluish

and the crystals within it
give it a bit of a shine.

- After it completely defrosts,

the bison's muscles
are still pliable

with a texture and color
of a kind of beef jerky.

Seeing that gives
Guthrie an idea.

- They decide to slice up
some of the bison muscle

and make it into a
stew and serve it

at a small dinner party.

- The meat is said to be tough,
it tastes earthy, gamey,

but it's also
surprisingly delicious.

No guests get sick for the meal,

but I'm also guessing no
one asks for seconds either.

- Finding and eating
an ancient blue beast

is definitely strange,

but so is what one construction
worker digs up in Canada.

[tense music]

- It's just another day
at work for Sean Funk,

who's an excavator operator
at an oil sand mine

in Alberta, Canada.

[excavator rumbling]

- So Sean is operating
his excavator in this pit

and he's scooping out this
material called bitumen.

- Bitumen is
essentially the remains

of plants and animals
from millions of years ago

that, over time, have been
transformed into petroleum.

- He raises his bucket to get
another scoop of this material

and he hears the bucket
hit something hard.

[excavator thudding]

- He switches off his machine
and jumps out to take a look,

and what he sees are
some small brown rocks

begin to fall outta the wall.

He calls over some other members
of his crew to take a look,

and when they look
closer, they see more

of these strangely
textured brown stones

still embedded in the wall.

- [Narrator] For more
insight, Funk's supervisor

calls in experts from
Canada's Royal Tyrrell Museum

to check out the find.

- Paleontologist
Don Henderson arrives

and he finds that these
strange discs in the stone

are fossils.

- So they carve a huge block
out of the side of this mine

in order to preserve
whatever is inside

without cutting into it.

- [Narrator] After
plastering that section,

they carefully strap it to a
crane and begin removing it.

- But as they're lifting with
the crane, they hear a crack.

The plaster splits in half,

the dirt and rock tumble to
the ground in a big pile.

- It's a terrible moment, to
put it lightly, for Henderson,

because he and his team

might have just
pulverized this fossil.

- [Narrator] The team
gathers up the fragments

hoping they can salvage at
least some of the fossil.

- Paleontologists spend
the next six years

painstakingly working, piecing
them back together bit by bit

as if they're working on
this giant, prehistoric

jigsaw puzzle.

- Once the fossil is fully
assembled, Henderson realizes

he has something
extraordinary on his hands.

- This is a 110 million year
old dinosaur called a nodosaur,

which is this giant
spiked herbivore

that walked around on four legs.

- It is a perfect,
full-sized fossil

of the entire body
of the animal.

Its skin, its soft
tissue, even its eyeballs.

It is an incredible, rare view

of what an actual
living dinosaur

would've looked
like in the flesh.

- The fossil turns out
to be distinctive enough

from every other nodosaur

that it actually is
given a new genus.

- What's even more
amazing about this find

is that it turns out to be

the most well-preserved
dinosaur ever found.

- Imagine you're a soldier way
back in the first century BC.

You hear a loud roar,

and what you see
isn't part of a movie,

it's terrifying and real.

- A hospital in Cordoba, Spain

is thrilled by the
acquisition of three new

high-tech x-ray machines,
but there's a problem.

Concrete bunkers
have to be built

to shield the rest of the
facility from the radiation.

- The hospital is situated
on a hill that once served

as an important economic
hub for the ancient Romans,

Moors, and Spanish.

So before any construction
can truly begin,

archeologists are brought
into survey the ground.

- Digging begins and the
team comes across something

completely unexpected.

An ancient arsenal.

- They find 17 huge stone
boulders shaped to be ammunition

for catapult launching.

Among the stones are
spearheads and other weapons.

- [Narrator] Then
they find something

that you might not expect
to see in an arsenal.

- They find a bone that measures
three inches by six inches

and it's a carpal bone,

basically the equivalent
of like a hand bone.

- [Narrator] But this
bone isn't from a human,

or even an animal
local to the region.

It's from a much more
surprising beast.

- This bone actually
comes from an elephant.

Many researchers believe

that these are the
first physical remains

of a war elephant ever
uncovered in Europe.

[elephant trumpeting]

- The use of elephants
in ancient warfare

is thought to have begun
between two and 3,000 years ago

in ancient India.

- After that, the use of
elephants in war spread

to places like Southeast
Asia, Persia, Northern Africa,

and the Roman and Greek empires.

Elephants were the original
weapons of mass destruction.

They were like a mixture of
a 19th century cavalry horse

mixed with a modern day tank.

- They could scatter enemy
formations, crush chariots,

trample foot soldiers,

and their riders enjoyed a
distinct height advantage

slinging their weapons
down at enemies.

[elephant trumpeting]

- The elephants wore armor
with these terrifying designs

and razor-sharp blades
were tied to their tusks

to increase both the
damage and fear factor.

- [Narrator] But who did this
particular elephant fight for?

- Based on the date range

for other artifacts
found at the site,

experts narrow down the elephant

to the two likeliest armies.

- [Narrator] The
first is regarded

as one of the greatest
military leaders of all time,

Hannibal.

- From 218 to 201 BC, General
Hannibal led the empire

of Carthage in the second
Punic war against the Romans.

We know that Hannibal deployed
elephants as part of his army

and fighting was featured
in places like Portugal,

Spain, and Italy.

- [Narrator] Some experts think

the war elephant
could have belonged

to an even more infamous leader,

Julius Caesar.

- In 45 BC, Caesar leads a
siege on the city of Cordoba,

killing 20,000 men.

It's believed that
his forces included

a battalion of war elephants.

- Currently, there's
no definitive evidence

linking this elephant bone
to the siege at Cordoba.

But researchers are working
to find more evidence

to figure out whose army this
elephant hand belonged to.

[elephant trumpeting]

- Not all shocking beasts
are the size of an elephant.

Take our next story about a find

in a Midwest backyard in 2017.

[ominous music]

- One spring night,

the wife of Jonathan
Martin asks her husband

to take out the trash.

He doesn't want to, so he
tells a little white lie.

- Martin is a forestry professor

who specializes in studying
trees, so he says he can't

because he has to collect
some specimens for his class.

- He walks into a forest
area behind his yard

and pulls a small handheld
black light out of his pocket.

Lichen and fungi
glow and black light,

so he uses it to help
him find samples.

- He stops to examine
a specimen on a tree,

but then suddenly, the quiet
of the forest is pierced

by a shrill shrieking noise.

[animal shrieking]

- The black light catches a
creature that is moving fast

and shaking the branches.

Instinctively, Martin ducks

and a glowing, bright
pink beast is jumping

right over his head.

- His mind and his
heart are racing.

He's like, "What
did I just see?"

- He flashes the
black light at it,

he sees these two blue beady
eyes staring back at him.

[dramatic music]

- It looks like a flying
squirrel, but it's glowing pink.

The animal gives him a look
and then quickly darts away.

- Martin is dumbfound.

He's never heard of any
mammal glowing like that.

When he brings the
story of his encounter

to the university, his
colleagues are skeptical,

to put it mildly.

- But a graduate student
named Allison Kohler decides

that she wants to investigate.

So she takes a
black light with her

to a local natural
history museum

that has hundreds of these
flying squirrel skins.

- She opens the drawer
full of specimens,

shines the black light on it,

and it begins to emit
this blinding pink glow.

- [Narrator] Kohler's curious,

so she launches a
study with a group

of researchers from
Northland College

to figure out why
flying squirrels glow.

- They think it's due to a
pigment in the squirrels' fur

that's known as porphyrin.

Flying squirrels have a lot
of porphyrin in their stomach

as well as that
stretchy piece of skin

that appears between their legs

that they use like wings
when they're gliding.

- Scientists around the world
are amazed by this discovery

and they quickly start
shining their own UV lights

onto a range of animals.

- It turns out it's not
just flying squirrels

that emit a glow, but
possums, polar bears,

zebras, bats, even
some kinds of leopard.

- So far, scientists
have identified

125 species of mammal
that glow in the dark.

There is a whole new field

of research investigating
this strange phenomenon,

and it is all
thanks to a husband

who didn't want to
take out the trash.

- Know the old saying,

"Every family has
skeletons in their closet"?

One Chinese family finds
out that saying is true.

- In 2018, the family
of an elderly man

gathers around his deathbed.

He beckons his
grandson to come closer

and in a weak voice tells him
to go into the abandoned well

behind his house to go looking

for something hidden there.

- It's a strange
and cryptic request,

but the grandson does it.

He lowers himself
into the dark well

and finds something buried in
the bottom, wrapped in cloth.

He tears away the fabric and
sees inside a human skull.

- When the grandson shows the
skull to the rest of the family,

they're shocked,
they're bewildered

because not only has
their grandfather

been hiding a human skull,
but it looks different, right?

It's not like your
typical human skull.

- It's longer than normal,
with prominent brow ridges,

eye sockets that are very large,

almost square, and a wide mouth.

- [Narrator] Horrified,

the young man asks his
grandfather for the story

behind the strange skull.

[ominous music]

- Back in 1933, he was
a construction worker

on a bridge over
the Songhua River,

which translates into English
as the Black Dragon River.

It was wartime

and the bridge was being
built under the direction

of the occupying
Japanese forces.

- One day as he was digging in
the mud along the riverbank,

his shovel hits what
he thinks is a stone.

So he reaches down
and he grabs it

and is about to toss
it off to the side.

But when he looks at his hand,
he realizes it's not a stone.

It's in fact, a skull.

- He realized that the skull
looked kind of odd and very old.

He flashes back to
a newspaper story

from a few years earlier

about the discovery
in China of a skull.

It was known as the Peking man.

- But he's terrified.

If his Japanese overseers
find out about it,

they might claim it, and
who knows what they might do

to keep him quiet.

- So he smuggled the
skull back to his house

and hid it in the
bottom of the old well.

He's worried about

what people might
think if they learn

he worked for the
enemy during wartime,

so he doesn't tell
anybody about it

for over eight decades.

- [Narrator] Eventually,

news of the skull
reaches a paleontologist

named Chengzhi at
a local university.

- Once Chengzhi sees the skull,
he immediately recognizes

that it's prehistoric.

So the family decides yes,
they will hand it over

to researchers
under the condition

that their grandfather's
name is never revealed.

- When scientists
analyze the skull,

they discover that it's
about 146,000 years old.

But what's most remarkable is

that it's not a
homosapien's skull.

They suspect it's a new
distinct human species,

an extinct relative
of homo sapiens,

even more closely related
to us than the Neanderthals.

- The skull itself is
from a mature male,

most likely in its 50s,

and the size of the
brain within the skull

is the same size as ours,

but the size of the
actual skull itself

is much longer than any
human skull ever recorded.

- Experts know very little about
how this early human lived.

So far we haven't found any
other fossilized remains

or any tools,
weapons, or any items

that might reveal more of
the hominid's lifestyle.

- Researchers call this
new species Homo longi,

but it's more popularly
known as Dragon Man,

after the Black Dragon River

where that one unnamed worker

made his astonishing
discovery back in 1933.

[pensive music]

- We never know
when, where, or who

will unleash the next
beastly discovery.

I'm Danny Trejo.

Thanks for watching
Mysteries Unearthed.