The San Pedro Mountains mummy
In the early 1930s gold prospectors blasting a cave in Wyoming's San Pedro Mountains found a tiny seated mummy about 17 cm high, later linked to Shoshone and Crow legends of 'little people'.
1932 CE · 42.35, -106.85 · status: explained
The account
The mummy, 'Pedro', was exhibited as an early hominid or a member of a pygmy race and passed through several owners before disappearing around 1950. X-rays taken in the late 1940s seemed to show adult features, such as full teeth and mature-looking vertebrae, which fuelled the 'little people' theory.
The sceptical view
Anthropologist George Gill, reviewing the surviving X-rays, concluded it was a Native American infant or foetus with anencephaly, which mimics adult proportions, mummified by the dry cave. A similar mummy that surfaced after 1994 was confirmed by X-rays and DNA as an anencephalic infant.