One day in October 1932, Cecil Main and Frank Carr, who spent several weeks searching for gold in a gorge at the foot of the San Pedro Mountains, a hundred kilometers southwest of Casper, Wyoming, discovered some signs of its presence in one of the thick stone walls that surrounded the gorge. The only way to know if there really was gold in this wall was to blow it up with dynamite. This they did.
As the clouds of the formed dust began to dissipate, the gold prospectors peered into the gaping hole that had formed behind it, and found that a small cave was hidden in the wall. It was a natural cave measuring 4.5 meters high and only 1.2 meters long and wide.
Inside was a small ledge and, to the amazement of the prospectors, they saw a tiny, elf-like creature, small as a midget sitting on the ledge with crossed legs and arms folded at the waist.
Getting closer, however, they realized that it was an inanimate creature. In fact, it was a mummy, however, little resembling other mummies.
First of all, she was unusually small. In a sitting position, its height was no more than 18 centimeters, and in general, the growth of a midget mummy was 35 centimeters. But she did not look like a child.
The face was not like that of an elderly, grinning man, with a low forehead, a wide flat nose, large eyes (one was half closed) and a very large thin-lipped mouth. The skin was tanned, bronze in color, covered with deep wrinkles, the body was barrel-shaped, the hands were very large, and tiny nails were clearly visible on the long fingers.
The crown was unusually flat and covered with a dark, jelly-like substance. On the forehead, bangs protruded from under this mass.
The stunned prospectors carefully lifted the mysterious little creature from its ledge and took it with them to Casper, where it aroused unprecedented interest. The mummy was named Pedro (after the name of the mountains where it was found) and ended up in the possession of Ivan Goodman, a car dealer who lived in Casper.
Promotional video:
Scientists, having learned about the find, were at first skeptical, suspecting falsification. Nevertheless, the anthropologist Henry Shapiro of the American Museum of Natural History, to whom Goodman showed his treasure, became interested and organized a study of the mummy using X-rays. If the amazing midget was only a fake, the X-ray would easily recognize the deception.
Lilliputian Pedro: X-ray examination revealed a skeleton inside the mummy, indistinguishable from a human, but the height, the growth of a midget is 35 cm.
But instead, X-rays confirmed that inside Pedro's mummy was undoubtedly a skeleton, similar to a human, but very tiny. He has the required number of ribs, well-developed arms and legs, and in the photographs, each bone of the once normally formed spine, damaged as a result of injury, and a broken left collarbone are perfectly distinguishable.
The impression was that this little man died as a result of violence - not only because of these fractures, but also because of the suspiciously flat skull and jelly-like substance on the head. The study showed that the skull was crushed by a very hard blow and that the dark matter is nothing more than medulla and clotted blood.
As for Pedro's age, despite serious damage, the skull was not so damaged that it was impossible to determine the absence of the fontanelle (the soft area between the parietal bones). Children have it.
Moreover, Pedro had a full set of teeth, and the most noteworthy were the large, protruding canines. According to the constitution and state of his organs at the time of his death, he should have been about 65 years old, and he died, according to Shapiro, not in recent times, but many years ago.
Goodman died in 1950 and Pedro became the property of Leonard Wadler. Later stories about him gradually disappeared from the newspaper pages, and where he is now is unknown. In 1979, Pedro's X-rays were shown to an anthropologist at the University of Wyoming, Professor George Gill, who stated that it was most likely a very malformed child or an intrauterine fetus with anencephaly, a disease in which the bones of the skull and the brain stop developing.; Moreover, the part of the brain that had time to form leaves the skull, since there is no obstacle - the bones of the skull - that would hold it.
This assumption could explain Pedro's deformed head and the fact that it is covered with blood and brain matter, but anencephaly cannot explain his adult facial features and the state of his teeth.
In 1993, the French zoologist François de Sarre, in a conversation with me, suggested that Pedro could be a fetus at an intrauterine stage of development, suffering from microcephaly (abnormal formation of the brain and bones of the skull), and his skin could be sutured under the skin of an adult, similar to how the Khivaros tribe produces their famous "tsantsa" or shriveled heads.
Professor Gill believed that Pedro may have belonged to an unknown race that had inhabited America since prehistoric times. Indeed, many descendants of the aborigines of America say that an unusually aggressive race of Lilliputians lived on this continent, the description of which is very similar to Pedro.
In particular, the Shoshone people from Wyoming speak of the Nimerigar tribe, who, when attacking, sent poison arrows from tiny bows. As some legends tell, these Lilliputians even killed their fellow tribesmen, if they got sick - they decapitated them or smashed their heads - just as Pedro's head was smashed. Biot would be amused if Pedro turned out to be such an "elf" who was euthanized.