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NEW YORK (AP) — Ask individuals what you would possibly discover buried within the muck on the backside of New York Metropolis’s East River and so they’d seemingly say “mob boss” earlier than considering of mammoth bones.
However a number of teams of treasure hunters have taken to the waterway in latest weeks after listening to a visitor on comic Joe Rogan’s podcast declare a boxcar’s price of probably useful prehistoric mammoth bones was dumped within the river within the Nineteen Forties.
Regardless of a scarcity of proof to again up the story, treasure seekers utilizing boats, diving apparatuses and expertise like remote-operated cameras have gone looking out, in hopes the murky waters are hiding woolly mammoth tusks.
“I believe the possibilities are simply pretty much as good because the lottery. And other people purchase these tickets day by day,” stated Don Gann, 35, of North Arlington, New Jersey, a business diver who’s been out on the water since early final week along with his brother and two staff.
It began when John Reeves, an Alaskan gold miner with a ardour for fossils, got here onto “The Joe Rogan Expertise” for an episode that aired Dec. 30 to speak about his land, the place he has personally uncovered quite a few age-old bones and tusks. Within the first half of the twentieth century, underneath earlier possession, digging for gold unearthed a trove of prehistoric mammal stays.
A few of that materials was dropped at New York Metropolis many years in the past to be handed over to the American Museum of Pure Historical past. Reeves cited a draft of a report put collectively by three males, together with one who labored on the museum, that included a reference to some fossils and bones deemed unsuitable for the museum being dumped into the river.
“I’m going to begin a bone rush,” Reeves instructed Rogan, earlier than studying from the draft and giving out a location: East River Drive, which is now referred to as the FDR Drive, at round sixty fifth Road.
“We’ll see if anyone on the market’s acquired a way of journey,” he stated, later including, “Let me inform you one thing about mammoth bones, mammoth tusks - they’re extraordinarily useful.”
After the episode aired, the American Museum of Pure Historical past threw water as chilly because the East River on the story.
“We should not have any document of the disposal of those fossils within the East River, nor have we been capable of finding any document of this report within the museum’s archives or different scientific sources,” it stated in a press release.
When reached by The Related Press through phone, Reeves refused to speak and as a substitute instructed a reporter to learn the pages of the draft he had posted on social media earlier than hanging up. He didn’t reply different calls and emails.
The pages posted on social media establish three males because the authors: Richard Osborne, an anthropologist; Robert Evander, who previously labored within the American Museum of Pure Historical past’s paleontology division; and Robert Sattler, an archeologist with a consortium of Alaska Native tribes.
Reached by The Related Press, Sattler stated the story in regards to the dumped bones got here from Osborne, who died in 2005.
The doc cited by Reeves was actual, he stated, and written within the mid-Nineteen Nineties. However it wasn’t one thing meant for an educational journal. It was a place to begin for one thing — perhaps a e-book — primarily based on Osborne’s information of a interval in Alaska when mammoth stays have been being found in loads. Osborne’s father labored at an organization concerned within the digging.
Sattler stated Osborne hung out across the operation as a younger man and possibly heard the story about surplus bones being dumped within the river secondhand. Sattler stated he didn’t have any specifics past Osborne’s recollections.
“He would have had some information from anyone telling him that they dumped some extra materials within the East River,” he stated.
Mammoth stays found in Alaska did wind up on the American Museum of Pure Historical past, together with some nonetheless on show in the present day.
The part of the Manhattan shoreline the place Reeves claimed the bones have been dumped underwent main adjustments within the Thirties and Nineteen Forties, because the East River Drive, later renamed for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was constructed on fill and pilings. The freeway opened absolutely to drivers in 1942, elevating questions on how somebody would have dumped an enormous trove of bones with out disrupting site visitors.
Gann stated he’s seen about two dozen different units of fossil hunters within the time he’s spent looking for mammoth stays out on the East River.
Visibility within the East River is extraordinarily poor, he stated. On a great day, you'll be able to see perhaps a foot in entrance of you. The present on the backside is powerful.
However the avid diver, who appeared in Discovery’s “Sewer Divers,” has a factor for seeking out uncommon finds — though mammoth bones are admittedly on a special scale than discovering a Paul Revere spoon at an property sale.
“I’ve hunted for bizarre artifacts my total life, so this one, it simply sort of matches into my repertoire,” Gann stated.
He and his crew haven’t discovered something, which he admits is disappointing, nevertheless it has spurred him to do a few of his personal digging into historical past. He’s switched his sights to a location off of the southern a part of Brooklyn, saying it might have been a extra seemingly website for cargo to be dumped than the East River off Manhattan.
“If I discover nothing, then I discover nothing. I gave it an sincere shot,” Gann stated.