Strangest Objects Recently Discovered

Being the curious creatures that we are, human beings are constantly discovering amazing new things. But sometimes, those discoveries are so strange, they raise more questions than answers. From truly bizarre artifacts that fell from the heavens, to ancient anomalies found underground, let's explore some of the strangest objects recently discovered.

Cubes With Devanagari Inscriptions Found In UK River

In May 2020, Englishman Will Read was sifting through sediment for precious metals in a shallow river in Coventry, England, when he happened upon something truly unexpected. Initially thinking he’d just picked up some riverbed debris, Will and his two sons quickly realized they’d scooped up something much more intriguing.

They’d actually uncovered cubes made of lead, small enough to hold between your thumb and forefinger, each bearing symbols and numbers intricately inscribed in a grid. They ended up finding more than 60 of the cubes, alongside various coins with holes punctured through them.

Unable to figure out what the cubes’ purpose were, Will turned to the internet for an explanation, and soon found one. Those types of cubes, it turned out, are used in traditional Hindu prayer rituals. The inscriptions reference certain astrological principles, and with the intention of requesting spiritual help or guidance from a cosmic entity, are dropped in running water to maximize the alleged effects.

But what were religious cubes of that nature, which are usually found in India doing in a river in England? And how long had they been there? As the coins found accompanying the cubes were minted in the 1980s, the cubes were likely deposited there sometime in past 40-ish years. As for who put them there, most likely, they were left by British Hindus, carrying out their ancestral religious ceremonies in their newer home of the UK.

Rivers like the Ganges are hugely important spiritual places for practitioners of the Hindu faith, so it’s likely that that river in Coventry served as an ideal substitute. But whoever placed the coins there, they certainly made for a more interesting riverbed discovery than the usual of old boots and shopping carts!

Dragon Stone

In September 2020, the strange, scaley-looking object in the image below was found in a field in Arkansas. After being shared to Facebook requesting information about what it might be, the suggestions came flying in, ranging from aliens, to fossilized dinosaur eggs, to petrified turtle shells, and giant mushrooms.

Some suggestions were more plausible than others, but when an expert finally chimed in, most ideas were proven wrong. It turned out, the find was actually something known as a ‘dragon stone’, which geologists refer to as a septarian nodule of siderite. Those rocks typically form in muddy sediment, when soils dry out over thousands of years, forming cracks, which are then filled with other minerals like calcite.

Most of the time, they’re considerably smaller than the specimen uncovered in Arkansas, making that recent find highly valuable to collectors. So, even if the finder was disappointed they hadn’t uncovered the remnants of an ancient dragon, at least they’d be able to wipe their tears away with fistfuls of cash.

Ancient Wolf Found In Permafrost

In 2019, a discovery was made in Eastern Siberia that was equal parts terrifying and fascinating. In the icy conditions, the exceptionally well-preserved remains of an ancient wolf were found, belonging to a sub-species that went extinct tens of thousands of years ago.

That particular specimen is thought to be between 32,000 and 40,000 years old, having been preserved by the permanently-frozen conditions it was found in, which prevented it decaying. The wolf’s fur, brain, snout, and fangs are all still intact, allowing researchers to determine its head to be around 5 inches longer than the modern grey wolves of today.

The larger head and wider, more robust jaw allowed the wolf to hunt large herbivores such as woolly mammoths back in its day. While it’s unknown how the wolf’s head ended up detached from its body, it may have been separated by shifts in the permafrost that encased it over thousands of years.

Alternatively, its head may have been buried under snow, dirt, or ice at the time of its death, while scavengers fed on the accessible, above-ground parts of its body. Either way, with jaws as ferocious-looking as that, let’s be grateful we don’t have to worry about non-frozen versions of those wolves anymore!

"Ancient" iPhone

In our modern world, considering how often they’re in our hands, smartphones have almost become an extension of the human body. But, as surprising as it sounds, the people of our time aren’t the only ones from history who liked tablet-shaped objects that could fit in your hand.

In 2019, an artifact was discovered at an archaeological site in the Tuva Republic that looked remarkably like a smartphone. But in reality, the artifact which was buried more than 2,100 years ago with its apparent owner, alongside coins and pottery was actually an oversized belt buckle.

The holes at the narrower ends would’ve originally been connected to the belt string, which has decayed away over time. The buckle is fashioned out of the gemstone, jet, and is intricately decorated with other precious stones, including turquoise, carnelian, and mother of pearl, fashioned into beads.

Clothing accessories crafted from jet were particularly rare in that geographical area at the time that person was buried, and were usually reserved for male warriors. That being a female skeleton suggests she was of high regard and reasonable wealth, not to mention being at the peak of fashion for her time. She may just be a pile of bones now, but with her classy attire, you could say she could still kill it on a runway.

USB Found In Seal

Sometimes, a discovery is strange not because of what the object is, but where it’s found. Case in point: in 2019, someone’s USB flash drive was discovered sticking out of some frozen leopard seal poop by biologists in New Zealand. The research team were studying the contents of the poop, which had been gathered from a New Zealand beach and frozen, when they found the thumb-drive inside.

Amazingly, it still worked, and was found to contain family pictures and videos, as well as photos of sea lions. Equal parts baffled and intrigued, the scientists launched a search for the owner. In a mere matter of days, the owner came forward!

It turned out, the owner was actually something of a seal enthusiast herself, and had been observing leopard seals on a beach when she accidentally dropped her USB drive. Somehow, it seems the seal ended up eating the drive, perhaps intrigued by the smell. Alternatively, a sea-bird might’ve picked the drive up out of curiosity before being eaten by the seal. Either way, the USB drive ultimately passed through the seal, only to have its droppings gathered by biologists, kicking that strange story into motion.

Wedding Ring Found In Fish

In 2019, a group of buddies fishing on Lake Michigan snagged a fish with an unexpected bonus: a wedding ring, secured around its tailfin with a cable tie.

Amazed by their discovery, the fishermen got in touch with local news stations to try to figure out the story behind it. Had someone tried to marry a fish? Not quite, but the real reason was perplexing in its own right. Less than a week after the discovery, a man came forward confessing he was behind the steelhead’s unusual accessory.

It turned out, after divorcing his now-ex-wife a few years prior, he’d been wanting to get rid of the ring and move on with his life. One day, he was thinking about how much she used to nag him about going fishing, when he decided upon the perfect way to get rid of the ring. To symbolize the end of those unpleasant times, and to celebrate his newfound freedom, he tied his ring to a fish and set it free in Lake Michigan.

A month and a half later, the fish along with the ring just so happened to be caught, sparking the search for its mysterious owner. While the men who caught the fish offered to return the ring, the divorced man made very clear he didn’t want it back. As far as he was concerned, that ring was nothing but a curse, and he claimed his life had been endlessly better since he got rid of it.

The Sorceress Kit, Pompeii

When a devastating volcanic eruption struck the Roman city of Pompeii in 79 A.D., much of the city was covered in a thick blanket of ash. While those living there perished in the intolerable heat and suffocating volcanic particles, the ash did something peculiar to the remains and belongings of those who lived there. It preserved them, creating an eerie snapshot of life 2,000 years ago.

In modern excavations beneath the ash, countless fascinating discoveries have been made, like one particularly magical find in August 2019. A treasure trove of items, found in a wooden box that had largely decomposed save for the brass hinges, was found in an excavated house, and are thought to have been the possessions of a sorceress.

Those items included buttons carved from bone; carved scarab beetles; crystals; phallic amulets; tiny, carved dolls and even a few teeth, among various other artifacts. Those strange objects are all presumed to have been used for rituals, with some of the items likely being crafted into necklaces which would be worn in hopes of channeling their supposed effects.

Some of the magical effects sought by the owner are thought to have included fortune-telling, seduction and bringing good luck. It seems the luck ritual may have needed some tweaking, considering the fate of the collection’s owner, but at least her intriguing, colorful collection survived the tragedy of Pompeii.

Roman Dodecahedrons

Some strange discoveries are more than just a one-time thing certain types of objects are found repeatedly throughout history, yet each new find reveals surprisingly little about their purpose. That is exactly the case with the objects below known as Roman dodecahedrons.

Their name comes from their 12 flat faces and the fact that they all originate from the Roman era. With most of them dating from between the 2nd and the 4th century A.D., those strange hollow objects feature strange spheres on their corners alongside circular holes of varying diameters. They’re usually made from copper alloy and are often found in Roman coin hoards, which suggests they were seen as highly valuable items.

But for what purpose? That question has remained unanswered since the first Roman dodecahedron was discovered in 1739, right up to the most recent finds, which still regularly occur at old Roman sites throughout Northern Europe. Some theorize that those dodecahedrons were decorative items or candlestick holders, as some examples have been found with wax inside.

Other theories suggest their use may have been in measuring the sizes of distant objects, detecting counterfeit coins based on their size, or even telling people’s fortunes. A more recent theory points out the varying sizes of the holes on the dodecahedrons’ faces, suggesting they may be finger and thumb holes, around which gloves could be knitted.

That lines up with the fact that most of those objects have been discovered in the chillier, northern regions of Europe. That said, theories for their usage are currently impossible to verify, as there’s no reference to their purpose in any Roman resources written, artistic, or otherwise that we have access to today. With no solid evidence from the time to support any of those theories, Roman dodecahedrons remain a mystery for now.

Airforce Beach Mystery

In 2018, a man visiting Airforce Beach in Evans Head, Australia happened upon an object which can looked like some sort of giant, alien kazoo. That eyebrow-raising object consisted of two pieces of 10ft long plastic piping, wrapped together in black plastic, all bundled up in fishing net.

At one end, there was a plastic dome, seemingly housing some electrical parts, though those didn’t appear to be wired up to anything inside the plastic tubing. The only clue as to the item’s origins or purpose was the word ‘Falcon’ written on the dome. That led some to suggest it may have belonged to Falcon Oil Company, based further south down the coastline in Sydney. If it did, though, the company still hasn’t come forward with an explanation to this day.

Others, meanwhile, suggested the object might be a floating beacon used for long-line fishing, perhaps carrying a tracker of some kind, that somehow got loose from the rest of the net. Whatever it is, nearly 10 years on, no official conclusion has been reached.

The Volgograd Discs

Some discoveries people make are either completely ground-breaking, or pretty mundane, depending on who you ask. For the members of the Russian mystery investigation group Kosmopoisk, finding this large in the image below, stone disc on an expedition near Volgograd, Russia, was an extraordinary discovery.

The 13ft-wide disc was reported to be one of several in the area, and to the group that uncovered them, its disc shape was of no small importance. According to the group, the shape of the stone, alongside the fact that it reportedly contained tungsten a metal used in military projectiles and aircrafts was evidence of extra-terrestrial origin.

Those explorers who happen to be UFO enthusiasts declared those discs to be ancient alien spacecraft or drones. According to the group, the reason they no longer look quite as one might expect for a flying saucer, is that they crash-landed there millions of years ago, and their metal has since degraded. For most people, that conclusion might seem a bit of a leap.

After all, it’s not that uncommon for rocks of that shape to appear in nature, as compact masses known as concretions. Those form when minerals fill the spaces between larger bodies of rock over long periods. Those concretions end up being harder than the surrounding rock or soil, and if that surrounding strata erodes or falls away, the concretion inside is revealed.

Concretions have been seen as a curiosity for hundreds of years, so the Kosmopoisk group’s otherworldly conclusions are nothing new. What’s more, the team provided no solid evidence that those rocks contained tungsten, and even if they did, that wouldn’t be definitive evidence of extra-terrestrials.

Though it’s rare, tungsten does occur naturally in ore, usually mixed with other compounds. So, while those types of rocks are undoubtedly fascinating curiosities, concluding them to be of alien origin is a big enough stretch to reach from Earth to Mars.

"Death Star" Space Balls

While unfounded claims of strange objects being from outer space are relatively commonplace, only very rarely are those claims proven to be true. But incidents of puzzling objects falling from the heavens actually have happened on a number of occasions in recent years. In two separate incidents, once in Australia in 2008, and again in Spain in 2015, two almost-identical, spherical objects fell from space into farmers’ fields.

Despite occurring 7 years apart, the objects had remarkably similar appearances, being tightly-wound balls of frayed, twisted metal. With their spiraling design, it certainly didn’t seem that those were naturally-occurring meteorites; so what were they?

After authorities stepped in to investigate, it was found that both of those objects were pieces of manmade space debris that’d found their way back to Earth. They’re believed to be parts of fuel modules used and released after a communications satellite was launched from Florida back in 1998.

They seemingly drifted in Earth’s orbit for years before eventually being pulled back home by gravity to befuddle rural agricultural workers around the world. While the finds were certainly fascinating, there was an element of concern, too. Considering their size, the materials they’re made from, and the speed with which they would’ve hit the ground, had one of them hit somebody, let’s just say it wouldn’t have been pretty.

Mystery Of The Monolith

In November 2020, a shiny, metal monolith appeared in the middle of a desert in Utah. The prism-shaped protrusion was spotted by state wildlife officials who were counting bighorn sheep in the area in an overhead helicopter. The discovery instantly caused a stir online, with people drawing links to the monolith that appears in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

While the monolith in the movie ushers in the next stage in human evolution, that didn’t seem to be the case for the one in Utah, as a photographer snapped shots of it being disassembled days later. It turned out to be little more than some plywood and metal sheets dug into the ground, and after it was retrieved, all that remained was its base and a pile of rocks.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Toward the end of November, another metal monolith of remarkably similar appearance was discovered, this time in Romania. Less than a week after that, yet another monolith of the same kind appeared atop Pine Mountain in California. With each of the monoliths bearing a remarkably similar appearance, it seemed that they were unquestionably linked.

But who was responsible, what the intended message was, and whether it would turn out to be a publicity stunt, has yet to be confirmed. That said, rumors have emerged that the highly-publicized monoliths may be a novel attempt to publicize progressive-metal band, Tesseract’s latest album, which features similar monoliths on the cover. As of yet, though, the answer remains unconfirmed.

10,000 Years Old Armadillo Shells

While fishing along the banks of a creek in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2019, one man stumbled upon something that definitely wasn’t a fish. Noticing an unusual rock along the muddy bank, he went to clear the dirt away to pull it out, but soon realized it was much larger than he’d initially expected, and it had a peculiar, cobbled texture.

It soon became clear that wasn’t any ordinary rock, and when experts were called in to excavate the object, it was found to be a remarkably well-preserved fossil. To be precise, that was the fossilized shell of a glyptodon, an ancient, giant relative of armadillos with a huge, bone-plate shell and club-like tail that went extinct around 10,000 years ago.

Finding those specimens so well-preserved is rare, although specimens of that kind have been found in that part of Argentina with increasing regularity in recent years. An even more impressive discovery in the area was made in 2020, when a farmer grazing his cows initially discovered two of those fossilized creatures. Amazingly, the ensuing excavation ended up uncovering a group of four!

Those recent discoveries followed in the wake of an initial discovery made in 2015 near the Argentine city of Carlos Spegazzini, not far from Buenos Aires. At first assumed to be a dinosaur egg, that glyptodon specimen was found in the bank of a stream by a man walking on his farm.

Modern-day Buenos Aires was clearly a hotspot for glyptodons before they were wiped out, and hopefully, more big-shell discoveries like those will follow in the future. They may cause a similar amount of confusion at first, but as we’ve learned, many of the best discoveries are also the strangest.

If you were amazed at these strangest objects recently discovered you might want to read about bizarre archeological discoveries. Thanks for reading!