Mysteries of the Unexplained and HubNugget Hopefuls

As it was my turn to write the HubNugget roundup hub, I decided to get an early start and headed to the clubhouse to help with the reading and selecting.

Maddie and Simone were already there, diligently sorting through categories. Stacks of paper covered every table and chair in the work room and a narrow pathway twisted through the precariously placed piles of paper to where the two sat cross legged on the floor in the middle of the HubNugget vault.

Papers littered the floor, looking like the debris left by a hurricane.

"What happened in here?" I asked.

"We came in to sort through the categories, like usual, but when we began moving the files, the air conditioning system went haywire and blew all the piles into one huge mess! So we had to start over and sort everything into categories again."

"Looks like you could use another pair of hands. Better yet, I'll call the team and see if anyone can come early to help sort this mess."

Soon, the rest of the team arrived and waded into the sea of papers.

"Did you know," Patty Inglish said, waving the blue piece of paper she was reading, "that what might be the oldest fossil footprint ever found appears to be the impression of a sandal crushing a trilobite?

It was dated 300 to 600 million years ago! That means either all our conventionally accepted ideas of evolution are wrong, or a shoe wearing biped from another world visited earth 600 million years ago. There is a quote here from James Madsen, the curator of the Museum of Earth Science at the University of Utah, that says, 'There were no men 600 million years ago. Neither were there monkeys or bears or ground sloths to make pseudo human tracks.What man-thing could possibly have been walking about on this planet before vertebrates even evolved?' Now there's an unexplained mystery for sure!"

"Here's another one!" Ladyjane1 said. "According to scientific opinion, pterodactyls, (flying reptiles with leathery wings and long tooth filled beaks,) died approximately 100 million years ago. But according to a number of French workmen, the last pterodactyl died in the winter of 1856 in a half finished railway tunnel at St. Dizier!

It stumbled out of a huge chunk of Jurassic boulder they had just split open. They were quoted as saying, '...it fluttered it's wings, croaked, and died at their feet.' The creatures wingspan measured 10 feet 7 inches and it had long talons instead of feet and a long beak with sharp teeth. It was identified by a local paleontologist as a pterodactyl and the surrounding rock was consistent with the period when pterodactyls lived, and the granite that imprisoned the creature had a cavity the exact mold of it's body! Holy cow, that is just too weird!"

"I agree," Simone said looking up from the stack of papers she had finally sorted. "Well, here is the first batch of HubNugget nominees in the Fashion and Beauty category.

"Wow, Enelle, here's a goodie!" Gals said, holding up another blue piece of paper. "it says here that a fossil encrusted geode was found in 1961 that contained something unexplained. Apparently, after the finder, Mike Mikesell ruined a diamond saw blade cutting it in two, he found a metal core approximately 2mm in diameter, that was encased in a ceramic collar that was itself encased in a hexagonal wooden sleeve that had petrified. Around this was the shell of the geode consisting of bits of fossilized shell, pebble and hardened clay, and two pieces of non magnetic metallic objects that resembled a nail and washer! A fragment of copper that was still visible between the ceramic and petrified wood indicated the two elements may have been, at one time, separated by a copper sleeve.

According to the dating of the geode (by the fossils it contained,) it was approximately 500,000 years old! Xrays were taken and the images are of an object that closely resembles modern day spark plugs! Even if this were false, how do you explain the presence of ceramic, a 2 mm metal core (like wire,) and carved hexagonal wooden sleeves in a 500,000 year old fossil?"

"That is a good one Gals," RedElf said. "How about this one?" She said, waving another blue paper. "Between 1786 and 1788, large quantities of limestone were mined near Aixen-Provence, France. In the quarry where this limestone was mined, the rock strata were searated by layers of sand and clay. By the time workmen had removed 11 layers of rock, they found they were 40 to 50 feet below the original ground level. Below the 11th layer of rock was a bed of sand that they had to remove to reach the rock beneath.

But, in the sand they discovered the stumps of stone pillars made out of the same rock they were excavating. As they dug further, they were surprised to find coins, petrified wooden handles of hammers and pieces of other petrified wooden tools. They also found the broken pieces of a petrified board, that when reassembled, was the exact quarryman's board that they themselves used - worn in just the same way as their own boards were, with rounded wavy edges.

How a stonemason's yard, equipped with the kinds of tools used in France in the late 18th century came to be burried 50 feet deep, under layers of sand and limestone 300 million years old is a question even more vexing today than at the time of the original discovery. We now know, thanks to advances in geological and anthropological dating that such a thing is absolutely and incontrovertibly impossible! Yet it happened!"

Maddie glanced up from her now, re-sorted pile. "My goodness, those certainly are unexplained mysteries. Oh, I have the second batch of HubNugget nominees in the Pets and Animals category. By the way, where on earth are you finding those hubs?"

Ripplemaker looked through the papers that Patty, Gals, ladyjane1 and RedElf had set aside. "These don't look like hubs at all," she said. "All of them are printed on blue paper, which is strange because everything else is white."

"Then what are they doing in here?" Maddie asked, to no one in particular. "Maybe Jason knows something," she said. Ripplemaker, would you mind giving him a quick call before we finish up here?"

"No problem," ripplemaker said. "I'll do that right away, then finish this lot of sorting."

"Hey! I just found two more unexplained mysteries!" I said, waving two more blue sheets of paper. "It says here that the footprint of a human being apparently fleeing from a volcanic eruption was discovered in volcanic ashe during the construction of a dam in Turkey in 1970. The age of the ash was dated at 250,000 years, and the print was pronounced human by forensic scientists in Sweden. So whoever made this print was an antecedent of Neanderthal Man!

This other one says that the imprint of a leather shoe was found in Triassic limestone in Nevada in 1927. Triassic limestone is conventionally dated at between 180 and 225 million years old. According to micro photographs, the leather was hand stitched with a finer thread than was used by shoemakers in 1927. However, the fact still remains that the imprint of a 'quality made' leather shoe left its imprint on the earth nearly 225 million years ago!"

"I have one more mystery to add before I give you the last batch of HubNugget nominees," ripplemaker said. "I just got off the phone with Jason, and he doesn't know anything about these unexplained mystery papers, or how they came to be mixed in with the HubNugget hubs!"

"Make that two more, Enelle," Simone said. "I went to get those papers to show Jason, and they have disappeared! Not a blue paper to be seen! I'd better give you the last bunch of nominees before they disappear too!"