National Geographic Tales of the Weird

by David Braun

  “In 2007 the CIA declassified over a thousand documents related to the OXCART program and published an unclassified history of it in conjunction with the acquisition from the Air Force of one of the nine remaining A-12 airframes,” now on display at CIA headquarters, Robarge added.

  What Remains

  Aerospace historian Peter Merlin, who has examined this crash site and several others involving secret aircraft, said he’s pieced together at least part of the cover-up story. “The A-12’s fuselage and wings were cut apart with blowtorches and loaded onto trucks along with the tails and other large pieces,” he said. “Smaller debris was packed in boxes.”

  Merlin’s research into recently declassified documents on the OXCART project unearthed a memorandum that reported that all traces of the plane had been removed from the crash scene in 1963. “My experience with crash sites, however, is that there is always something left.”

  And in fact recent investigations of the site have turned up parts of the plane’s wing structure as well as cockpit remnants still bearing the stamp “skunk works”—the covert department of the defense contractor Lockheed, which worked on the plane.

  Name That Plane!

  Area 51 has developed several of the most successful spy craft with some of the most interesting names:

  1. The Suntan: A plane designed to be a successor to the U-2, which could fly at speeds up to 2,000 mph 3,219 km/h). It was fueled by liquid hydrogen.

  2. The Bird of Prey: Named for a class of ships from Star Trek. A bomber with stealth technology but unstable at low speeds.

  3. Tacit Blue: One of the first successful attempts at creating stealth aircraft. Had an odd, whalelike shape, inspiring the nickname “Shamu.” Designed to fly low over battle operations as a reconnaissance vehicle.

  Unanswered Questions

  Though the CIA has released some photos of the incident, officials remain mum about exactly who was involved in the cover-up and how it was carried out. “There’s nothing I can tell you about how [this or] any other incidents were or are handled,” CIA historian David Robarge said.

  Today, experts at Area 51 are likely working on the next generation of aircraft. But don’t expect any information to emerge for several decades—despite the recent declassifications, CIA’s Robarge still won’t confirm the base exists. “Sorry,” he said, “I can’t say anything about it.”

  RELEASE THE KRAKEN!

  Kraken Sea Monster Account

  “Bizarre and Miraculous”

  Fossils in a prehistoric ocean graveyard have raised the theory of a kraken who moonlights as an artist. But are they more easily explained?

  Are fossils revealing the existence of a giant prehistoric squids art? The fossils in question are about 350 miles (560 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas, in Nevada’s Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park—a seafloor at the time the bones were deposited, some 200 million years ago.

  The fossils are circular vertebral discs, or backbones, that once belonged to Shonisaurus popularis, a species of ichthyosaurs. Based on the bones’ sizes, scientists estimate the ichthyosaurs grew to lengths of 49 feet (15 meters) or longer.

  TRUTH:

  MODERN-DAY GIANT SQUIDS CAN GROW AS LONG AS 43 FEET IN LENGTH.

  Portrait of an Artist?

  During a recent family trip to the fossil site, Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, noticed that some of the vertebrate fossils appeared to be neatly lined up into double rows.

  Struck by the orderly arrangement of the bones, McMenamin came up with a remarkable idea for how they came to be that way, which he presented at a meeting of the Geological Society of America. McMenamin’s hypothesis: A giant squid or octopus hunted and preyed on the ichthyosaurs and then arranged their bones in double-line patterns to purposely resemble the pattern of sucker discs on the predator’s tentacles.

  According to a press release detailing McMenamin’s hypothesis—titled “Giant Kraken Lair Discovered”—“the vertebral disc ‘pavement’ seen at the state park may represent the earliest known self portrait … I think that these things were captured by the kraken and taken to the midden and the cephalopod would take them apart,” McMenamin said in the statement. The kraken, he said, “was either drowning [the ichthyosaurs] or breaking their necks.”

  Things Fall Apart

  Paul “P.Z.” Myers is an evolutionary biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris and the author of Pharyngula, a science blog that is partially funded by the National Geographic Society. Myers called McMenamin’s hypothesis a “bizarre and miraculous story” and said his evidence is “weirdly circumstantial.” The fossil arrangement “is not surprising,” Myers said. “It doesn’t take an artist octopus to do it.” One could imagine, Myers said, that as ichthyosaurs died and their bodies rotted, their vertebral discs fell apart. The bones “are taller than they are wide, so they’re just going to flop over to one side or the other and can just happen to fall into two parallel rows,” which then get preserved as fossils, he said.

  “Fun to Think About”

  McMenamin’s kraken ideas have received media attention partly because they were presented at a scientific conference, but that’s no sign that a hypothesis is widely accepted or considered scientifically plausible, Myers added. Scientific meetings “are where scientists go to talk with their peers and discuss preliminary data, so they naturally have fairly lax standards,” Myers said.

  Ryosuke Motani, a paleontologist at the University of California, Davis, who has also conducted research at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park, was equally skeptical of McMenamin’s idea. “It’s fun to think about,” Motani said, “but I think it’s very implausible.” Motani proposed an alternative hypothesis for how the bones came to be arranged the way they are. “These bones are disc-shaped, so when they’re disarticulated after rotting, they lay flat on the seafloor and can get gathered up and packed together by ocean currents,” he said.

  “This particular specimen [that McMenamin focused on] has two rows. But I’ve seen others that have three rows … It’s natural that the bones get arranged like that.”

  THE BOY KING’S HIDDEN SECRETS

  King Tut Mysteries Solved:

  Disabled, Malarial, and Inbred

  King Tut may be seen as the golden boy of ancient Egypt today, but a DNA analysis reveals that Tutankhamun wasn’t exactly a strapping sun god when he was alive.

  A new DNA study apparently solves several mysteries surrounding King Tut, including how he died and who his parents were. The study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, marks the first time the Egyptian government has allowed genetic studies to be performed using royal mummies. Analysis reveals that King Tut was a frail pharaoh, beset by malaria and a bone disorder, his health possibly compromised by newly discovered secrets of his parentage—Tut’s mother and father were also brother and sister.

  “Inbreeding is not an advantage for biological or genetic fitness. Normally the health and immune system are reduced and malformations increase,” said study team member Carsten Pusch, a geneticist at Germany’s University of Tübingen. “He was not a very strong pharaoh. He was not riding the chariots. Picture instead a frail, weak boy who had a bit of a club foot and who needed a cane to walk.”

  The Boy King’s mummy (Photo Credit 5.5)

  Life of Tut

  Tutankhamun, pharaoh during ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom era, about 3,300 years ago, ascended to the throne at the age of nine, but he ruled for only ten years before dying around 1324 B.C. Despite his brief reign, today King Tut is perhaps Egypt’s best known pharaoh because of the wealth of treasure—including a solid gold death mask—found during the surprise discovery of his intact tomb in 1922.

  Good Mummies, Good DNA

  During the study, the condition of the DNA from the royal mummies of King Tut’s family surprised many members of the team. Indeed, its quality was better than DNA gathered from nonroyal Egyptian mummies several centuries younger, Pusch
said. The DNA of the Elder Lady (now identified as Queen Tiye, King Tut’s paternal grandmother) for example, “was the most beautiful DNA that I’ve ever seen from an ancient specimen.”

  The team suspects that the embalming method the ancient Egyptians used to preserve the royal mummies inadvertently protected DNA as well as flesh. “The ingredients used to embalm the royals was completely different in both quantity and quality compared to the normal population in ancient times,” Pusch explained. Preserving DNA “was not the aim of the Egyptian priest of course, but the embalming method they used was lucky for us.”

  Art or Genetics?

  King Tut’s father, Akhenaten, is often depicted in artworks as having feminine features: wide hips, a potbelly, and femalelike breasts. Some speculated that he had a genetic disorder that caused him to develop these attributes, but when the team analyzed Akhenaten’s body using medical scanners, no evidence of abnormalities were found. The team concluded that the feminized features found in the statues of Akhenaten created during his reign were done for religious, political, and artistic reasons.

  The Family Tree

  In the new study, the mummies of King Tut and ten other royals that researchers have long suspected were his close relatives were examined. Of these ten, the identities of only three had been known for certain.

  Using DNA samples taken from the mummies’ bones, the scientists were able to create a five-generation family tree for the boy pharaoh. The team looked for shared genetic sequences in the Y chromosome—a bundle of DNA passed only from father to son—to identify King Tut’s male ancestors. The researchers then determined parentage for the mummies by looking for signs that a mummy’s genes are a blend of a specific couple’s DNA.

  The Mummy’s Daddy

  In this way, the team was able to determine that a mummy known until now as KV55 is the “heretic king” Akhenaten—and that he was King Tut’s father. Akhenaten was best known for abolishing ancient Egypt’s pantheon in favor of worshipping only one god.

  Furthermore, the mummy known as KV35 was King Tut’s grandfather, the pharaoh Amenhotep III, whose reign was marked by unprecedented prosperity. Preliminary DNA evidence also indicates that two stillborn fetuses entombed with King Tut when he died were daughters whom he likely fathered with his chief queen Ankhensenamun, whose mummy may also have finally been identified.

  “What we can say for sure right now is that there is nothing wrong with [his] head. The head, is, indeed, intact.”

  Zahi Hawass

  Egyptian archaeologist, on whether or not Tut was killed by a blow to the head

  His Mother, His Aunt

  King Tut’s mother is a mummy researchers had been calling the Younger Lady.

  While her body has finally been identified, her exact identity remains a mystery. DNA studies show that she was the daughter of Amenhotep III and Tiye and thus was the full sister of her husband, Akhenaten.

  Some Egyptologists have speculated that King Tut’s mother was Akhenaten’s chief wife, Queen Nefertiti—made famous by an iconic bust. But the new findings seem to challenge this idea because historical records do not indicate that Nefertiti and Akhenaten were related.

  Instead, the sister with whom Akhenaten fathered King Tut may have been a minor wife or concubine, which would not have been unusual, said Willeke Wendrich, a UCLA Egyptologist who was not involved in the study.

  “Egyptian pharaohs had multiple wives, and often multiple sons who would potentially compete for the throne after the death of their father,” Wendrich said.

  Inbreeding would also not have been considered unusual among Egyptian royalty of the time.

  His Left Foot

  The team’s examination of King Tut’s body also revealed previously unknown deformations in the king’s left foot, caused by the necrosis, or death, of bone tissue. “Necrosis is always bad, because it means you have dying organic matter inside your body,” Pusch said. The affliction would have been painful and forced King Tut to walk with a cane—many of which were found in his tomb—but it would not have been life threatening.

  Tut’s Teeth

  The CT scans that revealed Tut’s cause of death also showed that the king was well fed, stood 5 feet 6 inches (1.6 meters) tall, and had an overbite, much like the other kings in his family.

  What Killed the Boy King?

  Malaria, however, would have been a serious danger. The scientists found DNA from the mosquito-borne parasite that causes malaria in the young pharaoh’s body—the oldest known genetic proof of the disease.

  The team found more than one strain of malaria parasite, indicating that King Tut caught multiple malarial infections during his life. The strains belong to the parasite responsible for malaria tropica, the most virulent and deadly form of the disease.

  The malaria would have weakened King Tut’s immune system and interfered with the healing of his foot. These factors, combined with the fracture in his left thighbone, which scientists had discovered in 2005, may have ultimately been what killed the young king, the authors write.

  Until now the best guesses as to how King Tut died have included a hunting accident, a blood infection, a blow to the head, and poisoning. UCLA’s Wendrich said the new finding “lays to rest the completely baseless theories about the murder of Tutankhamun.”

  TRUTH:

  KING TUT’S TOMB WAS FILLED WITH MORE THAN 5,000 OBJECTS.

  SKULL OF THE UNDEAD

  “Vampire” Skull

  Found in Italy

  A skull unearthed in Italy reveals the very real belief in medieval vampires.

  Near Venice, Italy, archaeologists found a woman’s skull with a brick lodged in its jaws—an exorcism technique used on suspected vampires. It’s the first time that archaeological remains have been interpreted as belonging to a suspected vampire, said team leader Matteo Borrini, a forensic archaeologist at the University of Florence. Borrini has been working on the island of Lazzaretto Nuovo, where the “vampire” was found, since 2006.

  “I was lucky. I [didn’t] expect to find a vampire during my excavations.”

  Matteo Borrini

  University of Florence

  Bloody Belief

  Belief in vampires was rampant mostly because decomposition was not well understood. For instance, as the human stomach decays, it releases a dark “purge fluid.” This bloodlike liquid can flow freely from a corpses nose and mouth, so it was apparently sometimes confused with traces of vampire victims’ blood.

  The fluid sometimes moistened the burial shroud near the corpse’s mouth enough that it sagged into the jaw, creating tears in the cloth. Since tombs were often reopened during plagues so other victims could be added, Italian gravediggers saw these decomposing bodies with partially “eaten” shrouds.

  Vampires were thought by some to cause plagues, so the superstition took root that shroud-chewing was the “magical way” that vampires spread pestilence, he said. Inserting objects—such as bricks and stones—into the mouths of alleged vampires was thought to halt the disease.

  In an ancient vampire-slaying ritual, a brick was lodged in the jaws of this 16th-century woman’s skull. (Photo Credit 5.6)

  COLD CASE SOLVED?

  Amelia Earhart

  Spit Samples to Help Lick Mystery?

  Amelia Earhart’s dried spit could help solve the long-standing mystery of the aviator’s 1937 disappearance, according to scientists who plan to harvest her DNA from envelopes.

  Using Earhart’s genes, a new project aims to create a genetic profile that could be used to test recent claims that her bones have been discovered. Right now, “Anyone can go and find a turtle shell and be like ‘I found Amelia Earhart’s remains,’ ” said Justin Long of Burnaby, Canada, whose family is partially funding the DNA project. The Internet-marketing executive is the grandson of 1970s aviator Elgen Long, who with his wife wrote the 1999 book Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved.

  “We asked, How can we take wild claims like this and bring legitimacy back into the
Amelia Earhart mystery?” Long said. “And so we started looking at everything at our disposal.” According to Long, Earhart’s letters are the only items that are both verifiably hers and that might contain her DNA. Hair would also be a good place to look for DNA, but no hair samples from Earhart are known. The International Woman’s Air and Space Museum in Cleveland was once thought to have a lock of Earhart’s hair, but a 2009 study revealed that the sample was actually thread.

  KEY MOMENTS in the LIFE OF A LEGEND

  1897: Born in Atchison, Kansas

  1920: Rides in a plane for the first time and decides to become a pilot.

  1921: Completes flight school. Purchases her first aircraft.

  1922: Sets women’s world record for altitude by flying at 14,000 feet.

  1930: Sets the women’s world flying speed record of 181.18 mph.

  May 1932: Becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

  August 1932: Becomes the first woman to fly nonstop across the U.S.

  1935: Becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean.

  March 1937: Begins a round-the-world flight, but abandons the attempt because of damage to her plane.