San Pedro Mountains mummy
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The San Pedro Mountains mummy (known informally as "Pedro") is a mummy discovered in Wyoming in the 1930s and since lost. Scientific analyses have concluded that it is the mummy of a Native American infant that was born with anencephaly, but its small size and unusual physical features led to theories that it was an early hominid or that it was related to legends of little people. A similar mummy that was studied in the 1990s has been nicknamed "Chiquita".
Discovery and description
The mummy that became known as Pedro was discovered in either 1932 or 1934 in the San Pedro mountains in Carbon County, Wyoming by two gold prospectors, Cecil Mayne and Frank Carr.<ref name=Wyo>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} According to this source, 1934 is the correct discovery year.</ref><ref name=Cowboy>Template:Cite news This source uses the spelling Cecil Main, and cites newspaper reports from 1932.</ref> After blasting open a cave, on a ledge inside it they discovered a mummified body in a seated position, approximately Template:Convert tall, weighing approximately Template:Convert.<ref name=Cowboy/><ref name=Gazette>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=ReferenceA>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=Billings>Template:Cite news</ref> Its standing height was estimated at Template:Convert.<ref name=ReferenceA/> The site may be within the Little Man mining claim, near Pathfinder Reservoir.<ref name=Billings/>
Subsequent history and analysis
In 1936, Mayne stated in a sworn affidavit that the mummy was then the property of Homer F. Sherrill and was in the Field Museum in Chicago, which has no record of it.<ref name=Wyo/><ref name=Cowboy/> Sherrill, a Nebraskan, exhibited it as an early hominid.<ref name=Gazette/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> It was displayed for years in the window of a drug store in Meeteetse, Wyoming. It was purchased in the 1940s by Casper car dealer Ivan Goodman,<ref name=Wyo/><ref name=ReferenceA/> who mounted it on a wooden base and enclosed it in a domed glass jar and advertised it as a 65-year-old "pygmy", "preserved as it actually lived".<ref name=Cowboy/><ref name=Gazette/> In 1950, shortly before his death, Goodman either lost it in New York<ref name=Gazette/> or, according to a 1979 article in the Casper Star-Tribune, sold it to Leonard Wadler, who later moved to Florida and died there in the 1980s.<ref name=Cowboy/><ref name=ReferenceA/>
Due to its small size and adult appearance, the mummy was related to Shoshone legends of little people called the Nimerigar,<ref name=Cowboy/><ref name=history>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=legend>Template:Cite news</ref> and to non-Native American folklore about "pygmy" Indians.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In August 1941, the Milwaukee Journal wrote about it in an article headlined "Did a Race of Pygmies Once Live in America?"<ref name=Wyo/><ref name=Cowboy/> In 2005, John Adolfi of Granby, New York, offered $10,000 for the mummy, hoping to use it to cast doubt on the established account of human evolution.<ref name=Cowboy/><ref name=ReferenceA/>
The Casper Tribune-Herald reported in 1950 that X-rays of the San Pedro mummy showed adult vertebrae and teeth.<ref name=ReferenceA/> There were reports of solid food in the stomach and of broken bones,<ref name=Wyo/><ref name=history/> but examinations led by Harry L. Shapiro of the American Museum of Natural History in the late 1940s and by Paul Martin of the Field Museum in 1950 concluded that it was an anencephalic infant; the appearance of a miniature adult was the result of the deformed head.<ref name=Cowboy/><ref name=Loendorf189>Loendorf and Stone (2006). p. 189, note 2.</ref> George W. Gill of the University of Wyoming saw the X-rays and agreed with this determination,<ref name=Wyo/> but the films have also been lost.<ref name=Gazette/><ref name=ReferenceA/>
Second mummy
In 1994, Gill was interviewed about the San Pedro mummy for an episode of the TV show Unsolved Mysteries along with Eugene Bashor, who was seeking evidence of the Nimerigar.<ref name=legend/> A family in Cheyenne who saw the program then came forward with a similar mummy, Template:Convert high, which had been purchased from a sheepherder in the same region of Wyoming around 1929<ref name=Wyo/><ref name=Cowboy/> and was dubbed "Chiquita". X-rays and DNA testing performed at Ivinson Memorial Hospital in Laramie and Denver Children's Hospital confirmed that it was a naturally mummified anencephalic female infant of Native American ancestry,<ref name=Gazette/><ref name=legend/><ref name=Loendorf189/> and it was carbon-dated to approximately 1500<ref name=Gazette/> or 1700.<ref name=Cowboy/><ref name=legend/> The family then withdrew access to the mummy.<ref name=Gazette/><ref name=legend/>
Both mummies are unique among Wyoming Native American burials in being in a seated position, with the arms wrapped around the legs. Chiquita is also unusual for a Native American in being blonde. The only other known mummy of an anencephalic infant is Egyptian.<ref name=Cowboy/><ref name=Gazette/>
See also
- Atacama skeleton
- Alyoshenka
- Koro-pok-guru, small people in Ainu folklore