EARTHQUEST NEWS

A Newsletter from Andrew Collins. Vol. 4, No. 1, Summer 2001

 

 

‘LOST CITY’ FOUND OFF CUBA – A SPECIAL REPORT

A ‘lost city’, that may be the fabled city of Atlantis, has been located off the coast of Cuba by a Canadian scientific research team, according to a recent report by a British press agency.

In a release dated Havana, 14 May 2001 Reuters of London informed the world that Soviet-born ocean engineer Paulina Zelitsky, the president of Canadian-based company Advanced Digital Communications, has detected ‘a sunken city’ in deep waters off the coast of the Cuban capital Havana.

Satellite-integrated ocean bottom positioning systems, high precision side-scan double-frequency sonar and remotely operated robots have detected the presence of what are being described as ‘shapes’ that ‘resemble pyramids, roads and buildings’. Their regularity seems consistent with the idea that they represent an ‘urban development’ composed of ‘symmetrical architecture’.

Somewhat cautiously, Zelitsky speculates that the deep-sea city, which sits upon a huge land plateau lying in around 2,200 feet (700-800 metres) of water, belongs to ‘the pre-classic period’ of Central American history, and was populated by ‘an advanced civilization similar to the early Teotihuacan culture of Yucatan’.

‘It is stunning,’ she said during an interview at her office at Tarara, on the coast east of Havana. ‘What we see in our high-resolution sonar images are limitless, rolling, white sand plains and, in the middle of this beautiful white sand, there are clear man-made large-size architectural designs. It looks like when you fly over an urban development in a plane and you see highways, tunnels and buildings.

‘We don't know what it is, and we don't have the videotaped evidence of this yet, but we do not believe that nature is capable of producing planned symmetrical architecture, unless it is a miracle,’ she added.

Officially, ADC has avoided saying what exactly it might have discovered deep down beneath Havana Bay, admitting only that it was ‘excited but reluctant to speculate until a joint investigation with the Cuban Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society takes place early this summer.’

The discoveries came during deep-sea surveys made by Zelitsky aboard the Cuban vessel Ulises. However, the vessel’s intentions had not been to uncover sunken cities. ADC is part of a joint operation set up with the Cuban government, and in particular its state partner Geomar, to survey Cuban waters for scientific purposes, including the location of the billions of dollars of bullion and lost treasure disgorged from sunken ships since the time of the Conquest.

Over the past 500 years it is estimated that hundreds of vessels must have been lost in Cuban waters due mainly to bad navigation, piracy and the violent Caribbean storms that regularly plague this tropical region of the globe.

A Toronto-based company, Visa Gold, which operates out of Havana's Marina Hemingway, claims already to have found some 7,000 objects from sunken vessels including jewellery, diamonds and pistols, said to have come from a brigantine called Palemon, lost off Cuba's northern coast in 1839. Visa Gold’s next target is the Atocha y San Jose, a Spanish vessel. It sank in Havana Bay in January 1642 after fleeing storms at sea.

The reason for this sudden interest in Cuban coastal waters comes in the wake of Fidel Castro’s government recognising for the first time that it does not itself have the ocean expertise or the inclination to conduct scientific research projects of this nature.

‘These projects are very important in helping us rescue things from history, which contribute to our national patrimony,’ said Eddy Fernandez, vice president of Geomar. ‘As you know, we have financing problems. This is a very expensive activity. They give us technology and financing. We provide historical and ocean expertise’.

Companies like ADC and Visa Gold use Cuban divers, crews and low-tech equipment. Even the vessels themselves are registered to Cuba, and it was the crew of one of these, the Ulises, which has detected the underwater ruins in Havana Bay.

The Full report plus interview

TOLD YOU SO!

The implications of Paulina Zelitsky’s discoveries of what is being seen as evidence of a deep-water city off the coast of northern Cuba are far reaching and quite extraordinary. In an on-line pole, conducted by the NBC home news service MSNBC, of the 1260 people who have voted so far (18.00 BST on 16 May) no less than 70 percent believed that the find ‘could be something big: Next stop, Atlantis’.

It means that already NBC are considering the possibility that the sunken city could be linked with Plato’s account of the lost city of Atlantis. This is good news for me personally as my book GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS, published in the UK last year, concluded that the most likely location of Plato’s sunken empire was Cuba, the first time that this country had ever been linked directly to the mystery of Atlantis.

I proposed that the evidence contained in Plato’s works the TIMAEUS and CRITIAS hinted strongly that his concept of Atlantis was based on stories and rumours reaching the ancient world via Phoenician and Carthaginian mariners concerning the existence of Caribbean islands. Moreover, his description of Atlantis’ great plain, said to have been 3000 by 2000 stadia (552 by 368 kilometres) in size, matched very well Cuba’s great western plain. Before the rapid rise in sea-level following the end of the last Ice Age this stretched southwards across the Bay of Batabano to the mysterious Isle of Youth.

Although I speculated in the book - which has now been published in the USA, Italy, Holland, Germany and Portugal - that the Atlantean city might await discovery beneath the shallow waters of the Bay of Batabano, news that a sunken city may now have been detected off Cuba’s northern coast is exciting news.

In September 1972 American oceanic explorer J. Manson Valentine and his close associate Jim Richardson felt they had detected a mass of rectilinear and curvilinear features in shallow waters on the south-western edge of the former Bahaman landmass (known today as the Great Bahama Bank), facing out across the deep Old Bahama Channel towards Cuba. I pointed out as well that as early as the 1950s light-aircraft pilots had reported seeing what they described as underwater ‘stonework’ that was ‘well within Cuban waters’. Similar sightings ‘north of Cuba’ of an alleged ‘submerged building complex covering over ten acres’ might even have convinced the Cuban government that a veritable city awaited discovery in its vigorously defended waters. There are, for instance, unconfirmed reports that this ‘building complex’ was explored with the assistance of Soviet submarines. Strange then that these recent discoveries of a sunken city in Cuban waters are being conducted by a Russian-born Canadian oceanographer.

Among those who felt they had glimpsed the remains of a lost citadel in Cuban waters was Leicester Hemingway, brother of the writer Ernest Hemingway. During a flight into the country, Leicester noticed, beyond its northern coast, ‘an expanse of stone ruins, several acres in area and apparently white, as if they were marble’. The exact location of these underwater features remains unclear, although they could well have been in deep waters north of the Cuban capital.

Only time will tell whether the discoveries made by Paulina Zelitsky and ADC do constitute firm evidence of Plato’s Atlantis, for if they do then it will fix, once and for all, its geographical location in the Bahamas and Caribbean, and not anywhere else in the world. However, the location of a lost city on a huge land plateau lying at a depth of around 700-800 metres poses new problems for the Atlantis debate. Plato wrote that his Atlantic island empire was destroyed by ‘earthquakes and floods’ in ‘one terrible day and night’, post-8570 BC in the TIMAEUS and around 9421 BC in the CRITIAS. This time-frame corresponds with the cessation of the last Ice Age, when we know that the sea-levels began to rise fairly rapidly as the ice fields which had covered parts of North America and Europe for tens of thousands of years began rapidly to disappear as the climate changed.

I have proposed that the mechanism behind Atlantis’ destruction was a comet impact which devastated the eastern Atlantic coast of America, causing literally 500,000 elliptical craters, known today as the Carolina Bays, sometime around 9000 BC. Fragments of the comet falling in the Western Atlantic basin, north of the Bahamas, would have created tsunami tidal-waves perhaps hundreds of metres high. These would have drowned, temporarily at least, large parts of the Bahamas and Caribbean, as well as low-lying regions of the eastern United States.

Myths and legends told by the indigenous peoples of the Bahaman and Caribbean archipelagos when the Spanish first reached the New World spoke of just such a cataclysm. They said that the waters suddenly rushed in and drowned a great landmass, breaking it up into individual islands. Although such a break up of the former landmasses of the Bahamas and Caribbean could not have been caused by tsunamis alone, the gradual rise in the sea-levels which followed this cataclysmic event would have drowned, more permanently this time, all low-lying regions creating the archipelagos we see today. Yet in the thousands of years which it took for the ice fields to melt in full, the sea-level rose only 300 metres. So any ruins lying in waters greater than this depth become more difficult to explain. Until we can ascertain the height of the sunken land plateau on which the alleged sunken city is situated, we can take the matter no further. Yet if it does lie in waters over 300 metres in depth, then Zelitsky’s statement that it could belong to ‘the pre-classic period’ of Central American history, and was populated ‘by an advanced civilisation similar to the early Teotihuacan culture of Yucatan’, becomes totally inconceivable.

The Teotihuacan culture, which thrived in Northern Mexico from around 100 BC through till about AD 500, remains an enigma to Mesoamerican archaeologists. Its origin is unclear. What we do know is that legends once told by the Totonac peoples of eastern Mexico spoke of the founders of its sacred city of Teotihuacan, with its mighty Pyramids of the Sun and Moon, as having arrived on the Gulf coast from an island homeland which lay beyond the sea. Here was to be found Chicomoztoc, the Seven Caves, where the first humans emerged out of the darkness at the beginning of time. For many reasons, not least of all the appearance of sea-shells of purely Caribbean varieties carved upon the walls of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at Teotihuacan, the Teotihuacan culture saw their origins as connected in some way with the Caribbean. Moreover, in GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS I identified the original Seven Caves complex as the Punta del Este caves on Cuba’s Isle of Youth, one of which, Ceuva # 1, has been described as a veritable Sistine Chapel of the prehistoric world. Many thousands of years ago unknown artists adorned its walls and ceiling with abstract petroglyphs of a blatantly celestial nature. Yet even so, any sunken city lying off the northern coast of Cuba, in hundreds of metres of water, must antedate the Teotihuacan culture by many thousands of years.

If Zelitsky and her oceanographic colleagues are right in their belief that ‘pyramids, roads and buildings’ do lie at the bottom of Havana Bay, then it is clear that the prehistory of the Caribbean, and its influence on the rise of Mesoamerican civilisation, might have to be altered dramatically. Moreover, it could well be that at long last the mystery of Atlantis, mankind’s greatest history enigma, is about to unfold in a most spectacular fashion.

Sources: ‘Looking for lost riches in Cuba’s seas: Underwater surveyors say they may have found sunken city’, Reuters report dated Havana, 14 May, 2001, MSNBC Home News to be found at http://www.msnbc.com/news/573489.asp

Collins, GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS, Headline, London, 2000.

ATLANTIS – THE LOST EMPIRE

June 2001 sees the release by Disney of a film animation entitled ATLANTIS – THE LOST EMPIRE, with narration provided by actor Michael J. Fox, star of the BACK TO THE FUTURE films. To accompany its release Disney have commissioned the making of a documentary about the true location and meaning of Plato’s Atlantis. It is to be screened in the States by the ABC network, and is to be shown world-wide in the months to follow, generally one week before the release of the film. More importantly, both myself and my theories on Atlantis feature heavily in this programme.

I was originally approached to take part in the documentary some months ago, but nothing came of it. However, in late April I was approached again by the production company involved. Initially they were to dispatch a film crew to interview me at my home in Leigh-on-Sea, but after due consideration they decided to fly me out to Hotel Atlantis on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, where they were conducting a number of interviews during the first week of May. I thought about the idea for a moment, before reluctantly accepting their invite!

It was not until I got out to the Bahamas that I found that the script was originally to focus on the idea that the ice-bound continent of Antarctica was ancient Atlantis. However, after reading the American edition of my book GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS, the producers decided to gear the whole programme around the idea that Atlantis lay in the Bahamas and Caribbean. More incredibly, in the final frames they are to use computer graphics to reconstruct Plato’s plain and city of Atlantis over the western plain of Cuba!

Also to be featured on the documentary, which will be screened in the UK prior to the release of the Disney film in July, is Boston geologist Robert Schoch, who talks about ice-age catastrophes and the Carolina Bays; ancient mysteries writer David Hatcher Childress, who will also argue that Atlantis was located in the Bahamas and Caribbean, and Taffi Fisher, the daughter of America’s late great treasure salvor Mel Fisher. He, you will recall, from GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS claimed, shortly before his death in December 1998, that he had detected underwater archaeological features somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. Moreover, he was confident that these were Plato’s city of Atlantis. However, he stated also that he would only reveal the exact location of the features when the United States was on better political terms with the country in whose territorial waters the ruins had been detected, both by satellite imagery and sonar scans. In GATEWAY I suggested that the site in question lay close to Cuba, even though Mel had provided just enough information for me to pin down, almost exactly, the country and location in question (and it is close to Cuba). In the light of the recent discoveries off the coast of Cuba by Paulina Zelitsky and the ADC team, Mel’s claims become more intriguing, since they suggest the presence of yet further underwater features of possible archaeological importance in the Caribbean Sea.

Since I knew that Mel’s daughter, Taffi, is to feature in the documentary I felt it was time to reveal to camera where exactly in my opinion the features could be found. This assumption was echoed by Garry Bormet, the producer of the documentary, and he hoped that Taffi would say the same during her interview. It would be improper for me to say here the exact location, especially in the knowledge that Taffi wriggled out of revealing the location during her own interview. All I can say, as I did in GATEWAY, is that in my opinion the location is not far away from Cuba. Keep a check on the TV programming to find out when the Atlantis documentary is to be screened in your country.

PHOENICIAN SHRINE CLUE TO ATLANTIC JOURNEYS

Now on to other matters. A votive cave on the Mediterranean island of Gibraltar has provided vital clues that the Phoenicians ventured out into the Atlantic Ocean as early as the 8th century BC.

Over the past 10 years archaeologists have unearthed several thousand items which show that the ancient religious shrine, which faces out to sea, was dedicated to Melkart, the Phoenician form of the classical god Hercules. It was found to contain 400 pottery jars, 25 blue, yellow and green glass perfume and ointment bottles, 10 finger rings and a large number of figurine pendants depicting representations of Melkart. In addition to these items, a selection of the votive pieces were found to depict Egyptian gods such as Bes and Horus, the infant son of Osiris and Isis.

Since the cave is visible for up to several miles out to sea, archaeologists now believe that Phoenician vessels making Atlantic journeys would pause at Gibraltar – the traditional site of one of the Pillars of Hercules – to pay tributes to the shrine of Melkart. They would then continue their journeys to places such as Britain, the Baltic, West Africa and even the Canary Isles.

Melkart was chief god of Tyre, the main port of the Phoenicians, on the Levant coast of Lebanon. It is thought that his veneration in Spain, and in particular the Phoenician and later Carthaginian port of Gades, gave rise to the myth that Hercules visited this port during the age of the gods.

According to Greek mythology Hercules’ tenth labour was to kill the monster Geryon, king of Gades, and steal his precious cattle. It was from the port of Gades in south-west Spain that Iberic-Phoenician vessels are thought to have left on their voyages of discovery to unknown Atlantic islands. Hercules eleventh labour was to steal the golden apples from the Hesperides, fabled islands, or nymphs, which lay across the ocean, and which, in all likelihood, were the Caribbean islands of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Cuba.

In one version of the story, Hercules went to Africa and demanded from Atlas three of the golden apples. Accepting the challenge, the giant unloaded on to Hercules his burden of supporting the heavens on his shoulders. Atlas then set off for the Hesperides and returned with the divine fruit. Hercules then tricked the giant into taking back the burden and promptly stole the golden apples, which had been cast to the ground. In another version, Hercules himself goes in search of the golden apples. On arriving in the Hesperides, he mortally wounds the dragon and steals away the precious fruit. Since the only place in which they could be preserved was the Hesperides, the goddess Athena returned the fruit to the garden.

The story of the golden apples is a myth integrally linked with both the western limits of the known world and the outer ocean. It brings together Hercules, whose name is attached to the entrance to the Atlantic; Atlas, whose petrified form was seen as the mountain that bears his name in Mauritania, an ancient country of West Africa, and the Hesperides themselves, which were both nymphs of great distinction and islands situated in the Atlantic Ocean.

These revelations come at the same time that evidence of a Phoenician presence on the Isles of the Canaries have come to light for the first time. According to the work of Pablo Atocha Pena, an archaeologist working on this subject in the Canaries, an inscription dating to around 500 BC has been located there, confirming the presence of Semitic voyagers during this early epoch. It is only a short journey westwards using the Northern Equatorial Current to the Caribbean, lending weight to the theory that this group of islands might have been behind the classical accounts of journeys by Hercules from the Phoenician ports of Spain to the Hesperides.

Source: Pena, Pablo Atoche, La Colonización Del Archipiélago Canario: Un Proceso Mediterráneo?, La Colonización Del Archipiélago Canario: )Un Proceso Mediterráneo?, 2000.

PREHISTORIC CARVINGS FOUND ON THE CANARY ISLES

In addition to the work of Pablo Atocha Pena on Phoenician exploration of the Carnary Isles, news comes of the startling discovery on the island of Fuerteventura of stone carvings depicting zoomorphic, or more likely reptilian, heads. What is incredible about this discovery is that the pieces have been dated to 6000 BC by palaentologist Francisco Garcia Talavera of the University of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote. Why he should date them to this early time-frame is unclear, since the Canary Isles are conventionally thought to have been unhabited until the arrival of the Guanche peoples, most probably from West Africa, during the first millennium BC.

Having seen the pictures in a recent issue of the excellent Italian ancient mysteries magazine HERA, I can say that they resemble the heads of the feathered serpents on the Temple of Quetzalcoatl in the ancient city of Teotihuacan in Central Mexico. Is it possible that the forerunners of the Teotihuacan culture were present in the Canary Isles thousands of years ago? I will bring you more on this story when I know more myself.

Source: ‘Mistero sotto la Sabbia’, HERA, 15, March 2001, p. 11, cf. Mas Alla, no. 143..

 

QUESTING CONFERENCE

This year’s Questing Conference is to be held at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 on Saturday, 3rd November. We have switched the venue quite simply because the Institute of Education was uneconomical. What we want to do is give you the best possible extravaganza of alternative history, forbidden archaeology at the best possible price. Hence tickets for this year’s event have been reduced from GBP28 to just GBP20 in advance, or GBP22 on the day. In addition to this, we have introduced a scheme where by you can purchase four or more tickets at a discount of 10 percent.

The line up is one of the strongest we have ever put together so far. Historical botonist MICHAEL CARMICHAEL, who last year presented a dynamic lecture on the importance of the blue water lily in Egyptian kingship and religion, will return to present a talk on the origins of alchemy. IAN LAWTON, co-author of the 1999 best-seller GIZA: THE TRUTH will present a lecture on the evidence for a world-wide high civilisation destroyed by a cosmic event before the end of the last Ice Age. ADRIAN GILBERT, co-author of the seminal classic THE ORION MYSTERY, will speak on the very latest developments concerning astronomical and celestial alignments at Giza. Writer and journalist DAVID ELKINGTON, who is the author of the recently published book IN THE NAME OF THE GODS, will present a lecture on the significance of acoustics and sonic technology to prehistoric cultures. He promises to bring along a special guest musician to demonstrate the power of acoustics. No names at this point, but be prepared to be amazed at his choice of guest. In contrast, CLIVE PRINCE and LYNN PICKNETT will lecture about their revelations concerning the mystical intrigue surrounding Rudolf Hess, Rosslyn Chapel, and the involvement in Hess’s plight of the English royal family, as presented in their new book on the subject. I will introduce the day with a review of the latest findings in the alternative history, forbidden archaeology field, while my friend and colleague GRAHAM PHILLIPS will end the day with a presentation of a slightly different sort. I have asked him to tell us about his childhood exploits! It has to be heard to be believed!

In addition to the above lectures, ROBERT TEMPLE, who delivered a lecture on his book THE CRYSTAL SUN at last year’s Mysteries of the Past conference, has agreed to attend the conference if commitments allow. He has business concerns in China, and often these will mean that he is out of the country on a regular basis.

As usual tickets are available either via credit card from Atlantis Bookshop on 020.7405.2120 (+20.7405.2120 outside of the UK), by post from the PO Box at Leigh-on-Sea, using the reply coupon which accompanies the conference flyer, or by purchasing them on the door.

I really believe that we have created an event which is not only the best in the country, but also one which is admirably value for money, so support it if you can.

The website contains further information on the various lectures as well as easy-to-follow details on how to obtain tickets. There are also answers to frequently asked questions regarding the conference. These include details of hotels and accommodation, and how to get to the venue from the nearest tube station. See you there.

TUTANKHAMUN – THE EXODUS CONSPIRACY

In the last newsletter (sent out electronically) I told how I was writing a book about a local holy site known as the Running Well, following a self-published booklet I did on the same subject back in 1983 entitled THE RUNNING WELL MYSTERY. Well, I’m afraid that this venture has had to be shelved for the moment, due to the foot and mouth problem in the UK and, more importantly, a contract I now have to write a book on the mysteries of Tutankhamun. It is to be written with Chris Ogilvie Herald, the co-author with Ian Lawton, of GIZA: THE TRUTH, who has been working hard on this subject for several years. I cannot say too much at this time, other than to say that it is going to be very controversial indeed. So if anyone has any unpublished stories regarding the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, Howard Carter, Lord Carnarvon, etc., Chris and I would be pleased to hear from them.

ANTIQUARIAN BOOK LIST

From time to time my friend and colleague Richard Ward and I produce an antiquarian book-list under the name ABC Books. These were printed up and dispatched to everyone on the postal mailing list. The last one was some three years ago now. However, we gave up this idea when we realised that the costs were beginning to out way the sale of the books, plus I ran out of time to do it on a regular basis. Yet with the advent of on-line book services, we have decided to resurrect the idea and sell the books either through the website or via the electronic mailing list. So if you are registered in this way, you should hopefully receive a copy of our latest book-list which includes over 160 books. The service is world-wide, enabling people anywhere to order books either via email or by telephoning the book-list hotline. If you have not received a book-list, click here to see if we have that enigmatic book which you have been trying to track down for years, or one which will enlighten you further on your specialist subject of interest.

ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER

If you do not receive EARTHQUEST NEWS electronically, then you are missing out not just with regards to the antiquarian book-list, but also newsletters themselves. In January I produced a newsletter (Vol. 3, No. 4, Winter 2000) which was sent out only to those who had registered their email address. If you want to read or download it, the full text can be accessed on the website. However, what it says, although informative, is now out of date. So don’t miss out in the future, register now by sending an email with 'subscribe' in the subject.

THE GROUP WITH NO NAME

Several rumours on the internet have been spread about a new cabal of authors of the alternative history, forbidden archaeology meeting clandestinely at a London hostelry each month to discuss matters of the day. Names banded about have included Adrian Gilbert, Ian Lawton, Chris Ogilvie Herald, Clive Prince, Lynn Picknett, David Elkington and myself. There are suggestions that they are planning to take over the world, or something to this effect!

The truth of the matter is that these meetings, under the banner of the ‘group with no name’, are merely to attempt to bring together like-minded individuals to discuss research topics which are of interest to us all. So far the meetings have been restricted to a few selected individuals, but later on they are hopefully to expand into full-blown lectures with a small audience. Subjects debated so far have involved the very latest news on the age of the Sphinx (as given by Chris Ogilvie Herald) and the evidence for a pre-Ice Age civilisation by Ian Lawton, who is currently writing a book on the subject. There are no plans to have the talks published as research papers, although what I can say is that new information of this sort enables authors of this field to update their own knowledge of the subjects under question, and this can only benefit the public as a whole.

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES

In the Spring 2000 issue of EARTHQUEST NEWS I reported on the upcoming UNSOLVED MYSTERIES exhibition which was to be held at Linz, Austria, in July 2001. It was to feature some 300 out-of-place artefacts of a palaentological and archaeological interest from around the world, including many of the objects previously featured in the works of ancient mysteries author Erich von Daniken. The venue has now been changed to the Vienna Arts Center, Schottenshift, Vienna, and the dates for the exhibition are now 22 June to 23 September 2001. Admission on the door is ATS 130. There is to be a conference to start the exhibition, which will include Michael Cremo, Neil Steede and myself. This is to take place on 22 and 23rd June and the location is the Gartenbaukino, Vienna. The entrance fee is ATS 380 per day.

Organiser Klaus Dona has promised the appearance of over 360 artefacts from all over the world including inexplicable pre-Columbian artefacts from Colombia, Equador, Peru, Mexico, as well several crystal skulls, the glider found in a tomb at Saqqara in Egypt, various objects from Sierra Leone, two inscribed stones from the site of Yoniguni in Japan and objects from the controversial Burrows Cave in the United States. More significantly, the exhibition will present a fossil of a human hand in rock that is over 65 million years old and contains an Ammonite of the Jurassic period! If you don’t believe me visit the UNSOLVED MYSTERIES online www.unsolved-mysteries.net. Hope to see a few of you there. Should be a good show.