• Although you might think humans have already found all there is to find on our planet,
we’re actually making new discoveries all the time.
How many more secrets are hidden all around us?
And what have we learnt from all the weird and wonderful stuff we’ve come across already?
Here’s the fifteen most bizarre discoveries on Earth.
15 - Kingdom of Saguenay • The Iroquoians are one of Canada’s First
Nation people and 500 years ago, they told the French colonists about the Kingdom of
Saguenay.
They spoke of tall, blond men with pale skin who wore furs and mined gold and silver.
Many historians believed it to either be a miscommunication or the Iroquoians were simply
wasting the colonialist’s time.
However, in 1960, L'Anse aux Meadows was discovered on the Island of Newfoundland; a thousand-year-old
Norse settlement made up of dwellings and metal workshops.
So, the Vikings had in fact come to the Americas centuries before Columbus.
14 – The Baigong Pipes • Near the start of the Yangtze river sits
White mountain.
It’s very inhospitable but a team from the US where hunting for dinosaur fossils and
came across what looked like ancient iron pipes.
The Baigong Pipes are still a great source of mystery as we have no idea how they got
there.
If they were man-made, how did some ancient civilisation have the technology?
But if they are natural, what process caused them to form?
Some reports have even said parts of the pipes are highly radioactive.
13 - Giant Lemurs • Lemurs are small, cute primates that are
only found in the wild on the island of Madagascar.
They’re a cousin of the big-eyed loris, which is where they get their name from since
the Latin “lemurs” means ghost, thanks to the Loris’ glowing eyes.
• But an older relative has been found and they were enormous.
In the Aven Cave, skeletons of a lost race of giant lemurs were found, who were the size
of gorillas. 12 - Roman Fedortsov
• We’ve barely unlocked any of the mysteries of the oceans and the deeper it gets, the
weirder everything seems to be.
Life has adapted to the extreme darkness and pressure with some seriously alien creatures.
• And Russian deep-sea fisherman, Roman Fedorstov, runs a twitter account where he
posts shot after shot of the bizarre and horrifying fish that are hauled up in his nets.
11 – Costa Rican balls • In the 1930s, the United Fruit Company
was clearing jungles in Costa Rica to make way for banana plantations.
Among the fallen trees they made a very weird discovery; giant stone spheres.
• They were created by the Diquis people, whose culture existed from 700AD to about
1500.
They made the balls, some of which were over2 metres in diameter, by smashing larger rocks
together and then polishing them down with sand.
Well, you’ve got to have a hobby, right?
10 – Cave of the Crystals • The Naica mine in Mexico produced lead,
zinc and silver and in 1910, miners found a giant crystal cave.
Without protection, you could only take about 10 minutes inside since it is about 58 degrees
centigrade and has close to 100% humidity.
• The crystals are enormous, some reaching over 12 metres and weighing around 55 tonnes.
Sadly, you cannot go visit as it was only the pumps that kept the water out and these
were turned off in February this year.
9 - Socotra Island • Socotra is
a large island in the Arabian Sea.
It’s about 130 km long and 50 km and is part of the territory of Yemen.
Since ancient times, it’s been used as a trading post but there has always been something
very strange about the island and it’s often been described as the most alien place on
earth.
• And in the 1990s, we discovered why.
A UN team found over 700 species that were unique to Socotra.
Only a handful of places on earth, like Hawaii, New Zealand and the Galapagos hold more and
all of those have a much larger land mass.
8 - Mount Owen Moa • In 1986, a group of archaeologists in
New Zealand came across a very exciting foot.
It belonged to a Moa, a giant flightless bird that stood some 12 foot high.
They became extinct over 2000 years ago and okay, you might think “we’ve found remains
from creatures way older than that; why all the excitement?
Well, this wasn’t just some bone fossil, the flesh and muscle were still attached.
We’ve still got no idea how this claw survived the ravages of time.
7 - The Screaming Mummy • Man E was a mummified corpse discovered
in 1886 by Gaston Maspero.
His sarcophagus was unmarked so it’s likely he wasn’t anyone important.
However, he had a very unusual characteristic – he had been mummified with his face locked
in a scream.
This was much more than decay or rigarmortis could do so it’s believed he could have
either been poisoned or perhaps buried alive.
6 - Yonaguni monument • Near the Ryukyu Islands in Japan, a series
of mysterious geometric shapes were discovered.
It’s called the Yonaguni monument and you can see columns, walls, a star shape and various
other shapes made out of rock and resting on the seafloor.
Many also have markings scratched into the sides.
• But, we’re still not sure if they are natural or many made.
Are they just rocks that cracked in and earthquake and scratched each other as they fell?
Or is it the remains of an ancient civilisation?
5 - Fingal's Cave • Thanks to computer design, we’re programmed
to believe that anything that is highly regular or symmetrical must be man-made in some way.
But the stones in Fingal’s cave have existed long before our monkey ancestors fell out
the tress.
• Discovered in 1772, this basalt stone cave in Scotland is packed with hexagonal
columns that look like they must have been created.
But it’s actually the result of the way the lava flow settled and cracked.
4 - Shambhala • Caves were found in the Himalayan mountains
in 2008.
They contained manuscripts and paintings made on the rock walls.
It was also clear that the caves had been made by man rather than nature.
• What makes this discovery bizarre though is that it fits with a lot of the legend about
Shangri-La, an ancient Himalayan Kingdom that was supposed to be just fantasy.
The old Tibetan texts talk of a city placed within the hollow earth, matching the caves.
They also found a pile of 600 year old skeletons. 3 – Headless Vikings
• Historically, Vikings have often been thought of as the aggressors, the guys who
turned up at ancient villages and went about pillaging, burning and generally ruining the
local house prices.
• However, one discover in the UK really flips this on its head.
In the seaside town of Weymouth, 51 young male Vikings were dug up in a slaughter pit,
where their heads were stacked neatly away from their bodies.
So, perhaps the brutality wasn’t as one sided as we previously believed.
2 – Pea-sized Frog • Frogs are known for being pretty small
but the Microhyla nepenthicola takes this to a whole new level.
When they were first found, it was assumed they were juveniles but it turns out that
a full sized adult will only grow to just over a centimetre.
• They were discovered in 2010 on the Asian island of Borneo, although it’s thought
there are some examples in old museum collection, mistakenly labelled as examples of young frogs.
1 – Em Drive • This scientific discovery seems to defy
the laws of physics.
The Em drive is an experimental space engine that would use solar power to create microwaves.
These microwaves go into a blunted cone chamber called a resonant cavity thruster.
The microwaves bounce off the walls and create a larger force one the wide end than one the
narrow end.
Why it does this is the big argument and some say it’s down to an as-yet-unproven concept
called Unruh radiation, which is predicted by Einstein’s General Relativity but hasn’t
been observed so far.
Apparently, the Chinese are already doing tests on it in space.