People Who Found Scientific Discoveries In Their Own Backyard

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People Who Found Scientific Discoveries In Their Own Backyard

By Joe Burgett - August 28, 2023

Butchered Female Mammoth

Year: 2013

It’s pretty interesting to be a paleontologist who makes amazing scientific discoveries in your own backyard. And that is exactly what happened to Timothy Rowe. He first learned that fossils could be in his backyard when a neighbor noticed something sticking out of a hillside on a New Mexico property belonging to Rowe. When he examined the area, Rowe found a tusk, bashed-in mammoth skull, and several other bones that appeared to be deliberately broken. He determined this was a site where two mammoths had been butchered. He might not have realized at the time that he made one of the biggest scientific discoveries of our time.

The findings later proved him right. A female mammoth and her calf were butchered likely by a local human population. This was where scientific discoveries like this became invaluable to the world. The bones date back 37,000 years, which means humans would have been in North America long before we once thought. It is unlikely any other species would have been able to do this kind of skilled butchering. It also had to be done using tools, which might even give us more information about when tools were first being used in human populations in North America as well.

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Saddle Ridge Hoard

Year: 2013

A couple named John and Mary were walking their dog in their backyard when they happened across the top of a decaying canister poking out of the ground. Of course, they dug it out with a stick and then brought it inside. When they opened the container, they came across a batch of discs immersed in dirt. The couple cleaned them and discovered they were actually $20 gold coins from the 1890s. They rushed back to where they found the first canister and found seven more cans! In all, the couple discovered over 1,000 coins. Weirdly, the couple reburied the coins to hide them and contacted a coin dealer named Don Kagin.

Kagin spent the next several months trying to restore the coins. John & Mary made one of the best scientific discoveries in terms of finding old coins that were likely long since gone. In total, John & Mary found 1,427 coins in all that had been minted between 1847 and 1894. The face value for these coins totaled $27,980 but Kagin felt they were worth a lot more. Some of them were very rare. In fact, a dozen of these coins are among the best surviving in the world. Due to Kagin’s expert opinion, the total coin collection is now valued at $11 million. This makes the coins one of the biggest scientific discoveries that one found around their home.

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Bones Hidden In Ben Franklin’s Basement

Year: 1997

Benjamin Franklin is one of the United States’ Founding Fathers, who was also well-known for his inventions. He was never one to shy away from a good party, particularly those in France. However, a lot of people began to wonder if Franklin had a secret that no one ever knew about him. In November of 1997, the skeletal remains of at least 28 bodies were found in the basement of Franklin’s very elegant townhouse. At the time, police thought this was the work of a serial killer currently at large in their city. Yet that was when one of the most compelling scientific discoveries of the late 1990s started to get very interesting.

When the remains were examined, they dated back to the mid-1700s. What’s interesting is that the home, located at 36 Craven Street, is not an American address at all. It is in the heart of London, England. Franklin was born in 1705 in Boston, Massachusetts. However, he was a diplomat for the United States as an adult and lived at this address. Yet one should not assume Franklin had a dark secret. Rather, the bones come from an anatomy school that had been run by William Hewson, the son-in-law of Franklin’s landlady, Margaret Stevenson. The school was opened at Craven Street by Hewson after a falling out with his mentor, which Franklin actually wrote about.

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The Backyard Tunnel Into An Egyptian Pyramid

Year: 2014-2015

If you think these other scientific discoveries found in a backyard or local property were interesting, they don’t hold a candle to this. An Egyptian man named Nagy was digging in his backyard in 2014, which was technically illegal. In doing so, he uncovered large stone blocks. Without realizing it, Nagy uncovered a corridor roughly 33 feet beneath the ground. When Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities learned about Nagy’s discovery, he sent archeologists to his home. What he found was a causeway to the Pyramid of Khufu, the oldest of all the remaining Giza pyramids.

Funny enough, archaeologists had been searching for this exact corridor for more than three decades. Herodotus actually mentioned it in his Histories writing and claimed he even visited it in the 5th century BCE. He wrote that the passage was enclosed and covered in reliefs. However, before Nagy, only small remnants were ever found. The Khufu pyramid complex is said to have a connection to a lost temple near the Nile River. Due to this, the discovery of the causeway allowed archeologists to assume the temple might be buried beneath the village of Nazlet el-Samman. Perhaps, they will go digging there to find out one day.

Where Do We Find This Stuff? Here Are Our Sources:

Harvard University

Guinness Book of World Records

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