- Tonight on The Proof Is Out There.
What's that lurking in the water?
Does the Loch Ness Monster have a cousin?
- What's exciting is that I can't readily identify
what type of animal this is.
- [Tony] Summoners claim to commune with UFOs.
Is this their proof?
- It was just shimmering super bright and it was just quiet.
- [Tony] The ground is breathing
and the forest might be thinking.
- Is it possible that the forest is working collectively
in response to some kind of threat?
- [Tony] And the secrets of the star disk.
Did an otherworldly intelligence leave us a message?
- This artifact has a lot more to say than you'd think.
(exciting music)
- [Tony] Around the globe are videos.
- [Witness] What the heck is this?
- [Witness] It's moving.
- [Tony] Photos and sounds that defy explanation.
(electric buzzing)
(dramatic music)
- [Marc] Is it some kind of unidentified object?
What's exciting is nobody really knows.
- [Tony] What are they?
- [MJ] Some sort of bizarre mutation.
- Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.
- I'm Tony Harris,
and as a journalist for more than 30 years,
I've followed the facts where they take me.
Now I'm bringing that spirit of investigation
to the world's strangest sounds and images.
We'll analyze each one with top experts.
- It's a credible case, it's a credible video.
- [Tony] And pass a verdict on what it is.
- This video is clearly faked.
- The proof starts now.
(dramatic theme music)
Good evening and welcome to The Proof Is Out There.
Legends about sea monsters
have fascinated mankind for centuries.
Many such creatures are thought to be holdovers
from the prehistoric era that somehow survived extinction.
But what if some of those so-called monsters
originated on another planet altogether?
August 10th, 2019 in Tynemouth, United Kingdom,
a small seaside town in Northeast England.
A local man enjoys a morning coffee
on a pier overlooking the water when he spots this.
We see a creature in the water,
dark, skinny and wiry, of indeterminate length.
It lurks just beneath the surface in the shallows,
hovering in place and almost submerged,
but then it breaks the surface
and reveals a long, smooth body.
Its shape is reminiscent of a snake,
and then it goes back under and disappears.
Field researcher Ken Gerhard
helps make sense of what we just saw.
- What's exciting is that I can't readily identify
what type of animal this is.
One intriguing possibility is that there could be a form of
quote, unquote, "underwater alien",
and this is born by an ex-OceanX researcher
who does an underwater exploration
who claims to have encountered alien-like creatures
in the ocean that he described as hyper advanced.
But physiologically speaking, he said that
they somewhat resembled stingrays or manta rays
with wing-like appendages.
- [Tony] Next, Gerhard wonders if this might be
a saltwater cousin of a local freshwater legend.
- Still, others have hypothesized
that this could be Bownessie,
which is England's most famous aquatic denizen.
Bownessie has been reported from Lake Windermere,
the largest lake in England.
It's described like a serpentine animal, but very large.
Reports of Bownessie only date back to about 2010 or so
when it was first observed by a reporter,
and since that time, there have only been about 10 sightings
or accounts of Bownessie,
but still we have to recognize that there is a long history
of lake monsters throughout the British Isles.
- [Tony] Bownessie, like its legendary cousin
the Loch Ness Monster,
is thought by many to be a plesiosaurus,
which were believed to live exclusively in the oceans,
until July 28th, 2022,
when an international team of researchers
discovered plesiosaur fossils
in ancient freshwater riverbeds in Morocco.
So is it possible that a plesiosaur could be making
its way from Lake Windermere to the ocean?
In addition to aliens that resemble stingrays,
underwater photographer Luis Lamar
has described giant underwater spiders
and poison deep water sea snakes with bright yellow heads.
Such figures are referred to as USOs,
or unidentified submerged objects.
Could this be one of the alien creatures
from Lamar's accounts?
Let's ask our experts.
(tense music)
Wildlife biologist Stephanie Schuttler
weighs the possibility that we're looking at
one of Britain's famed water monsters.
- People think that this is Bownessie
or some type of lake monster by the way that it's moving.
It seems to be going in and out of the water,
and these things fit what a lake monster would look like.
- [Tony] But Schuttler is more skeptical.
- I wouldn't say it's really characteristic of an animal.
Usually animals move faster, especially at the end.
They don't bob up and down like that.
When the end parts of it come up and down,
they look like 90 degree edges,
and I can't think of any animal that fits that description.
- [Tony] Next, marine biologist Shea Conger
discusses the possibility
that this is a creature from another planet.
- It's been conjectured based on some witnesses
that this might be an extraterrestrial.
This to me looks like a really normal object.
It's in pretty shallow water,
so it doesn't seem like there's anything
particularly mysterious about it.
It does seem like it's moving pretty dynamically
in the water, and that could either point to the fact
that this is something that's alive,
or it's just something that's really flexible
and catching the incoming tide and currents as they come in.
Based on the fact that this object
is not really making any advanced or directed movements,
I can pretty much rule out that this is some kind of alien
or extraterrestrial creature.
- [Tony] But even though she doesn't believe
this figure's an alien, Conger still thinks the evidence
points towards something strange and unexpected.
- It's not navigating its environment.
It's just waving a lot.
Hydrologically, if this were an animal,
you would see something like a wake or disturbance
at the surface.
So because of that,
I don't think this is a living, self-propelled item.
I believe this is probably some sort of plastic
or other type of debris
that's being moved around in the water.
- Conger points out that more than 10 million tons
of plastic waste enter the oceans each year,
and between the angular shape of the object,
the lack of a wake and its dark, reflective nature,
all signs point to this being a large piece of plastic
floating in the current.
(tense music)
The verdict?
This is just some floating debris.
We didn't spot Bownessie this time,
but rest assured we will keep a keen eye out
for more sightings in Tynemouth.
For a while now, we've been covering a worldwide movement,
a subculture really, within the broader search for UFOs.
It's a group of people who not only believe
extraterrestrial visitors have been coming to the planet,
but that we humans have the power to summon them
and spot them with infrared binoculars like these,
and they say there's video to prove it.
October 2021, it's a clear and cool evening
in the quiet town of Meriden, Connecticut.
Bruce Waterbury is out on his back deck
with a pair of infrared binoculars
looking for signs of extraterrestrial activity,
when suddenly he sees this.
A large, bright light moves in the sky
across a field of stars.
Take a closer look.
Its shape appears to be solid
and close to a near-perfect circle.
There are no blinking lights,
and it doesn't appear to expel any exhaust
or have visible means of propulsion.
- It was shimmering, just shimmering and super bright,
and it was just quiet.
The adrenaline was rushing through my arms and everything,
so it was a little shaky.
- [Tony] Then after Bruce circles a laser pointer
around the orb, it appears to shrink in size,
and then suddenly disappears.
But Bruce doesn't believe this UFO sighting
was some random occurrence.
- [Bruce] I believe there's alien life.
I'm not an expert, but I try to follow the steps
to make contact with extraterrestrials.
- [Tony] Writer Amy Teitel explains,
the process is part of a new trend in UFO circles
called CE-5.
- CE-5 is a UFO summoning group.
The people who are involved with CE-5 use a special app,
certain frequencies and meditation to try to summon UFOs
so they can see them.
- [Tony] Sound strange?
Well, the idea of contacting aliens
isn't as radical as you might think.
In fact, a group called METI,
which stands for Messaging ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence,
was formed in 2015 to establish a scientific protocol
for contacting aliens,
albeit in a higher tech way than CE-5 summoners.
- METI is a group that transmits
interstellar messages via radio telescope,
basically putting messages out into space
in the hopes that someone will receive and hear them.
In 2017, METI sent a message
of scientific and mathematical equations to Luyten's Star,
which sits 12 light years from the Earth.
- Now, Luyten's Star was chosen because of a planet
in its solar system, GJ 273B,
which has been called a super Earth.
It's nearly three times as large as Earth
and thought to be a good candidate
for extraterrestrial life.
But can UFOs be summoned from there or anywhere else?
Let's see what our experts think.
(tense music)
We begin with astronomer and video effects designer,
Marc D'Antonio, to see if this might be
some sort of aircraft.
- Aircraft have red lights, they have green lights,
they have a bottom strobe.
So we can immediately say it's not an airplane,
and it's not a drone in my view
because you'd have to have a very, very bright light,
which wouldn't make any sense.
And when you get UFO reports,
you hear the object move through the sky
at an unbelievable speed
and then did a 90 degree turn to the left or right,
but in this particular case, we don't see any of that.
- [Tony] So if it's not a UFO,
is it something more down to Earth,
an animal seen among the stars almost every evening?
- I have seen some night vision imagery
of things that fly across the sky,
but usually they're objects like bats,
and creatures like bats have a very erratic flight pattern.
- [Tony] Instead, D'Antonio points to the smooth motion
and path of the object as a defining clue.
- If you look in the night sky any night of the year,
you can see upwards of anywhere
from five to 10 satellites an hour.
- [Tony] But if it's a satellite,
why does it look like a glowing ball of light?
D'Antonio thinks he has the answer.
- A satellite could have been high enough up
in the atmosphere where the sunlight was hitting it
and illuminating it and it was reflecting the sunlight,
and it was dimming because it was going over
the Earth's terminator into the Earth's shadow,
and so it saw less and less sun until it saw none.
- [Tony] But based on the size of the object,
Rich Hoffman of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies
respectfully disagrees.
- It looks relatively large compared to the stars,
which would tell you
that it is relatively close to the observer,
and so in that context you would would be saying
that possibly that's the Earth light phenomenon,
which are basically balls of gas.
They're a bubble moving across the sky
and they emit a light, different colors.
They tend to be near ground
and getting up to maybe about 2,000 feet altitude
and moving in a straight line.
- [Tony] Hoffman says one theory is that Earth lights
are generated by tectonic strains
within the Earth's crust that create an electric charge
which ignites gases released within the ground.
- It's the closest match that I can come up with,
but can I conclusively say that that's what it is?
No, so it would fall into the category
of being an unidentified aerial phenomena
until it's proven otherwise,
because even when you want to call it something else,
you need to really have that convincing evidence
that supports the fact that that's what it really would be.
(tense music)
- Our verdict?
We're going with genuine UFO.
Although both our experts have good arguments,
as Hoffman says, until we can get more definitive proof,
we feel we can't say exactly what this is.
But one thing we do want to make clear,
using a laser pointer in the night sky
is not only dangerous to pilots and aircraft, but illegal.
So if you want to do any pointing at UFOs,
use your finger instead.
- Burial sites, storage containers,
or drinking goblets for giants?
All have been offered as explanations
for these next odd structures.
The problem is, trying to find the correct answer
could kill you.
It's March 2014 in the Xiang Khouang Plain
in Laos Highlands.
Amateur archeologist Alexander Kerekes
sets out to capture a mysterious sight on film
for one of the first times ever.
His footage shows thousands of large stone jars
scattered a few feet apart throughout the field.
These huge, hollow jars are different sizes
and look almost like they grew
out of the vegetation around them.
- The fascinating thing is some of these jars are humongous.
You ask yourself, how did they get here?
How did the people transport them there?
How were they built?
- [Tony] Writer Eric Grundhauser says these stone jars
have baffled scientists and locals
since French archeologists first studied them in the 1930s.
- These giant, stone jars date back almost 3,000 years.
They have these nearly perfectly round apertures at the top.
They stand anywhere from three to 10 feet high.
Some of them weigh as much as 14 tons.
- [Tony] There is no written history
about the origin of these jars,
but local legend points to an ancient king of the giants.
- The story goes that Khun Cheung won a decisive battle,
and to celebrate, he wanted to create a feast
with this local Lao-Lao rice wine,
and so he created all of these giant cups
for his giant army.
- [Tony] Others have speculated that these artifacts
may have had a more practical use
for travelers of the ancient world.
- One theory is that these jars
were placed along an ancient trade route,
and that they acted sort of as storage containers.
So as travelers passed through the area,
they could come here, leave the goods in one of these jars,
and then another traveler could come pick them up,
almost like an ancient drop box.
- [Tony] Yet another theory is that these weren't used
for sustenance in life,
but instead were part of a ritual of death.
- The concept that these jars
would have been used as burial urns
is backed up by the findings of some archeologists
who in a nearby cave found some human remains
and some ashes.
- The simple fact that these jars have survived
is an anomaly.
They lie on the site of the Secret War in Laos,
where the US government dropped more bombs on the country
in the 1960s and '70s
than they used in Germany and Japan combined
during World War II.
The area is off-limits to most,
since the region is littered with mines and active bombs,
making it too dangerous to study properly.
But let's see what our experts can uncover.
(tense music)
Archeologist Dr. Ed Barnhart
explores whether there's any credence
to the legend of the giant king.
- Giants are in virtually every folklore around the planet.
It might be something to do with finding dinosaur
or mammoth bones.
Mammoth skulls were the origin of cyclopses,
but archeology has yet to produce a single skeleton
of a giant humanoid creature, so I can rule out
that these jars are made by and for giants.
- [Tony] Then could these containers have been used
as part of an ancient form of drop box,
as Grundhauser suggested?
- These jars are leading up towards Northern India,
and that would lead one towards the conclusion
that they are part of a trade route.
People had to have access to food and water.
They may have also needed places
to temporarily store the things that they were transporting
and trade to secure them.
- [Tony] And Barnhart believes a recent discovery
supports this theory.
- In a region called Assam,
they found another 65 of these jars.
The more we find of these jars
and see that there is a linear pattern they're following,
the stronger the hypothesis
that they represent a trade route
between India and Southeast Asia.
- [Tony] Anthropologist Kathy Strain
thinks these jars had another use
that may have been tied to a death ritual.
- I believe that these jars represent a burial practice
that was very common in that area at the time.
There is a cave nearby that has what is now a chimney
drilled into it and black soot.
We now realize that those were for cremations.
Then they would remove the bones
and then put them in a secondary burial
and then put the ashes into one of the jars,
and we know this because some of the jars
that have been opened had human remains in them.
- [Tony] But scientists believe
the human remains found in the jars
were placed there long after the jars were created,
so the containers might have been repurposed at some point.
(tense music)
Our verdict?
We like Barnhart's trade route storage theory.
The discovery of those similar jars in India
is pretty convincing.
We know that ships have traveled back and forth
between the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia
since prehistoric times, carrying spices,
aromatic roots, and resins.
Still, the lack of written records
and the fact that the dangerous landscape
inhibits further study
means we may never have a definitive answer.
- Forests are often called the lungs of the Earth,
and with good reason.
They supply roughly one third of the planet's oxygen.
But as beautiful as that metaphor is,
trees don't actually breathe in the common sense of the word.
Or do they?
October 16th, 2018.
A hiker is winding his way through a dense forest
in Sacré-Coeur, Canada
when his trek through the woods takes a shocking turn,
so he takes out his camera and records this.
The land begins shaking before him.
The ground seems to inflate and then deflate.
It's almost as if the Earth is breathing.
So could the forest be alive?
According to journalist Erin McCarthy,
one theory suggests it just may be.
- The theory is that this is all possible
through mycorrhizal networks,
which are essentially fungal filaments
that link up with the tree roots
in a symbiotic relationship.
Say for example there's a plant over here
that's being eaten by insects.
It will emit chemicals called volatile organic compounds
that will actually warn nearby plants
that it is being attacked, and then those plants
will also emit their own chemical
that makes them not so palatable to any insects.
- [Tony] Could that mycorrhizal network warning system
be so powerful that it would cause the ground
to suddenly move,
or are we looking at a different kind of phenomenon?
McCarthy says another kind of mysterious force
may be at work.
It's a phenomenon known as a fairy trap.
Researchers have documented multiple reports
nearby from the island of Newfoundland, Canada.
The idea was travelers on long journeys
would leave gifts and offerings to fairies for good weather
or safe passage, but those who did not
could be tricked and trapped.
(tree thudding)
- Some areas of the Canadian wilderness
are said to be fairy hotspots.
According to one tale,
there was a man who was wandering through the forest
who encountered a stand of trees
that he had never seen on that path before.
This obviously freaked him out quite a bit,
and so he walked the path back and forth about three times,
and on the third time, the trees disappeared
and everything was back to normal.
Could we possibly be looking at a fairy trap here?
- So what do we have here?
Trees communicating and reacting to an oncoming threat?
Fairies at work?
It's estimated Canada is home to almost 318 billion trees,
which represents 30% of the whole world's forests.
But what do our experts think we have here?
Let's make sure they don't miss the forest for the trees.
(tense music)
First, we talk to meteorologist Juan Hernandez.
With the ground moving so violently,
is the answer obvious?
Could this be some kind of earthquake?
- Seismographs are located everywhere across the globe,
and if it was an earthquake,
we would have seen a jolt in the seismograph,
at least a couple of waves.
We did not pick that up from here.
- [Tony] So it may not be a quake,
but Hernandez is convinced that Mother Nature
is definitely playing a role.
- If we look at the wind gusts that specific day
on October 16th, they were approaching 61 miles an hour.
Now you would expect a significant amount of movement
in the trees.
Taking a look at the entire month,
this was the windiest day.
- [Tony] Okay, so high winds might obviously sway trees,
but actually move the Earth like that?
We don't even see that during a hurricane.
But what about the idea that trees are communicating?
Could the trees be connected as part of a wood wide web,
sending signals and speaking to each other
through the mycorrhizal network?
NASA geologist Bob Anderson can't say for sure.
Instead, he sees clues in the video
to explain what's happening.
Check out the moss.
- Well, the first thing you could notice in this area
is these big boulders.
These boulders are laying all over the place, which tells me
that those boulders are also under the ground,
and so there's not a lot of soil under there.
My second clue is this green that you see here.
It's a layer of moss that grows all around it.
- [Tony] While the moss may look like solid ground,
it's in fact more like a doormat covering the rocks,
and very thin.
- So what you have here is a rocky type of soil
with a tree on top with roots that are very weak
and then covered with the moss.
That's a very unstable tree system.
- [Tony] So both Anderson and Hernandez say it's ultimately
a combination of factors led by the weather,
a strong, heavy wind getting under a loosely connected layer
of moss and earth.
- It's probably what we call a microburst,
where you get a tremendous amount of air
driven down to the ground.
It's literally pulling up that layer of moss with its roots,
causing trees to move
and making it look like something breathing.
(tense music)
- Our verdict?
We're going with loose soil and strong winds.
We think Anderson's analysis of mossy topsoil
coupled with a possible microburst that day
are ultimately responsible.
But while these trees are not necessarily breathing
so to speak, they do help humans, too.
On average, one tree produces
nearly 260 pounds of oxygen each year.
Two mature trees can provide enough for a family of four.
- We have seen a wide variety of UFOs over the years.
Bright orbs, triangles, tic tacs, saucers.
But what about one that's all of the above?
Think it is impossible?
Well, this next video from down under
just might change your mind.
March 30th, 2022.
It's a partly cloudy day in Melbourne, Australia
when a man notices something in the sky
that's not so white and fluffy.
In fact, the site is so surprising
he breaks the law to pick up his phone while driving
and captures this.
Three gray-colored objects streak across the sky.
- [Tony] The crafts appear to be cylinders
flying in formation, but let's zoom in
as the camera follows them across the sky.
Have they changed shape?
According to journalist MJ Banias,
if these are UFOs, Banias says it wouldn't be the first time
they've made headlines in Melbourne.
- The Westall UFO incident
is probably one of the most famous
UFO cases out of Australia.
It occurred in 1966, where several hundred school children
saw what looked to be like a flying saucer
literally hovering outside their school building.
In fact, several teachers on site
said they also saw this object.
- [Tony] But unlike the Westall incident,
these UFOs appear to be shapeshifting.
We've brought you stories of mysterious
shapeshifting UFOs before,
like this video from Salento, Italy in 2017.
Is that possible?
Scientists have experimented using substances
similar to Silly Putty
that can behave as both liquid and solids.
We seem to be seeing that kind of technology
on display here, but is it alien?
- We often view this idea of shapeshifting
as being something from science fiction,
but in the case of this video,
there's definitely a belief out there that it could be.
- So are we looking at a shapeshifting UFO here,
or could it be some kind of secret craft
developed by a nation here on Earth?
Well, if you are looking for information
from the Australian government, you are out of luck.
Despite recent UFO disclosures from the US military,
in 2011, the Australian Department of Defense
said all of their UFO files were either lost or purged.
So in order to find out what this really is,
we'll have to ask our experts.
(tense music)
So is this video real or an elaborate CGI hoax?
We take that question to forensic video analyst
Michael Primeau.
- No fragments or information about the original device
were detected.
It appears to be something
that's actually traveling in the sky.
However, because of the high level of compression
and the lack of digital integrity,
they can't be verified as an authentic piece of evidence,
in which case the result is inconclusive.
- [Tony] Next, we check in with Rich Hoffman.
If this video is real, does he think it could be a UFO?
- UFOs don't do what you see and hear,
which is where they change one minute into, from a disc shape
over into something that's relatively long.
Morphing like that
is just not characteristic of the phenomena.
- [Tony] Aviation expert Tim McMillan agrees.
- We just don't see any behavior,
we don't see any movement, any abrupt changes in speed.
It is traveling fast, which makes it unusual,
but not so fast that I don't think
that there could be conventional explanations for.
- [Tony] If it's not a UFO,
then are we looking at secret military technology?
- I'm unaware of anything that has been developed
by the military that combines
some sort of shapeshifting technology
that would be operational and flying.
- [Tony] So if it's not a UFO or secret technology,
what is it?
McMillan says he sees a clue.
- When the objects start passing over a building,
I can't see wings.
You can start to see the vague hint
of a rear tail stabilizer.
That would would start leading me into the area
that we may be looking at three aircraft.
- [Tony] Aircraft without wings?
How is that possible?
Hoffman explains it's an optical illusion
based on the position of the camera.
- You see things depending upon your perspective.
For example, if I'm at the bottom of a disc-shaped object
or a circular object,
I would obviously see and say well, it's round.
If I were off at an angle,
I might be saying well, wait a minute.
From this perspective it looks like it's oval.
- [Tony] McMillan agrees the placement of the camera
not only hides the markings of an aircraft
but also explains the shapeshifting.
- Where it appears to be changing shape,
really just has to do with the angle
of where they're being filmed.
So those wings are obscured,
and they're flying in such a close formation.
What we're looking at here
is going to be three distinct aircraft
that just happened to look like one
based on the angle of the camera.
- [Tony] But why would three airplanes be so low in the sky
and dangerously close to each other?
- I think we could possibly be looking at
three stunt aircraft,
aircraft that are specifically designed
for acrobatic flight.
That theory would explain why you would have three aircraft
flying in such close proximity.
- [Tony] The best stunt pilots in tight formation
have been known to fly a mere three feet apart.
- They're flying in such a close formation
that the angle that it's being filmed
has made it appear like this is a shapeshifting aircraft.
(tense music)
- Our verdict?
We're going with airplane aerobatic demonstration,
and when we did a little digging of our own,
turns out McMillan is correct.
It just so happens that on March 30th, 2022,
the Royal Australian Air Force
dedicated a new memorial at Point Cook,
a suburb less than 10 miles from where the video was taken.
The dedication included an aerobatic plane performance,
and according to public flight data,
the direction the driver is facing
is exactly where these planes would have been.
- We know that the legendary Bigfoot
is indigenous to the Pacific Northwest,
but it is far from the only enigmatic hominid
said to walk the Earth.
Australia's Yowie is also described
as a hairy, ape-like creature.
A team of researchers there say they recently shot
some high-tech footage that proves it really exists.
In May, 2021, Queensland based Yowie researcher
Dean Harrison and his team are testing out infrared cameras
at Springbrook National Park.
They picked this spot because they believe
they've seen traces of Yowie activity among the brush,
and that night, they captured this mysterious footage.
The thermal imagery seems to show a solitary figure
hiding behind or even hugging a large tree trunk.
- [Dean] Now, this is doing what the Yowies do.
They hug a tree, pretend they're a part of a tree
if there's a human in the area and they just blend,
so you can see him just putting his head in.
- [Tony] Minutes later, the image changes.
Now it looks like there's a couple.
- [Dean] Two giant creatures emerge from the foliage,
and one is bending down to pick up something.
- [Tony] As it bends over, you can also make out
what looks like one of the creature's heads.
It looks cone-shaped.
The figures are large with wide shoulders
and ape-like proportions.
Field researcher Cliff Barackman,
who has been to Australia to study the Yowie,
says the footage aligns with descriptions
from Indigenous peoples going back centuries.
- All of the Aborigines down there
have drawings on the walls of caves depicting these things.
They're prevalent in their storytelling traditions as well.
But then the settlers came in the late 1700s
and they too started running into Yowies,
which is another very strong indicator
that they're a real, biological animal.
- Now, Bigfoot-like creatures are part of folklore
the world over.
Nepal has the Yeti, Mongolia has the Alma.
One theory is that they all descended
from a single Asian ancestor,
some of whom made it to Australia
while others crossed the Bering Land Bridge,
came to North America and evolved into Bigfoot.
If this video is real, it could help prove that theory,
but that's a big if.
(tense music)
- There's some sort of subject, creature,
person, if you will.
It's something that's emitting a heat signature.
As we go through different FLIR filter arrays,
this object's movement is consistent.
There is something happening in here that's moving around.
- [Tony] Look at the footage with this filter.
Now, the head comes into better view.
It appears to have a pronounced sagittal crest,
a ridge of bone along the top of the cranium.
It's similar to what's seen
in the skulls of the early hominid Australopithecus,
which some believe to be the common ancestor of Bigfoot,
Yowie, and other similar creatures.
But Primeau is cautious.
- Although we have not found any evidence
to support that the recording was fabricated,
we have no idea what is being depicted here.
- [Tony] Next, our zoologist Roxy Furman
analyzes the anatomy of the figures.
- What we can see clearly at one point
is that there are two animals pictured.
It also looks like it's a bipedal animal,
which means it walks on two legs.
- [Tony] That might have you thinking primate,
but here's a key fact.
There are no known primates native to Australia.
In fact, the only bipedal animals are the cassowary
and the kangaroo, which look nothing like this.
So how do we explain the heat signatures
and those head shapes?
Furman thinks she may have the answer,
people wearing headlamps.
- That would explain why the head's
a slightly strange shape.
- [Tony] That would mean the people
were either misidentified,
or they're participants in an elaborate hoax,
maybe Australia's version of the Patterson-Gimlin film,
if that was a hoax, too.
But anthropologist Kathy Strain says that in this case,
size does matter.
The research team went back to the spot in daylight
and measured the tree matching the thermal footage
as best they could to get a sense of the size of the figures
in the infrared video.
- Whatever it is, is more than eight feet tall.
The possibility of them being human is highly unlikely.
I came to the conclusion that what this video shows
are two real Yowie.
I think it is one of the most significant films
taken in at least 50 years.
(tense music)
- So yes, there's a possibility that this is a hoax,
but based on Professor Strain's estimate
of the creature's height,
we're going to say these are possible Yowies.
- People have been watching the skies
since we first emerged as a species,
but when humans first started recording
their astronomical observations is up for debate.
And now an accidental discovery
could turn everything we know on its head.
It's 1999 near Nebra, Germany.
Two German looters were ransacking the site
of an archeological excavation in Middleburg Hill
when they come across a treasure trove
of Bronze Age artifacts.
They quickly sell the goods on the black market,
and in 2002, a police raid on an art collection
brings to light a truly unique item from the stash.
Take a good look.
This photo taken after the loot was recovered
shows a 10 inch circular object
about the size of a vinyl record.
It's adorned with 32 golden circles, a larger circle,
a crescent shape, and an arc on its circumference.
A smaller arc on the left side has gone missing.
There's a smaller rainbow-shaped golden arch
upside down near the bottom.
Science journalist Amy Teitel says this now-famous object
is known as the Nebra sky disc.
- It's got a full circle and a crescent
that looks like it's meant to be the sun
and a crescent moon, and there's these two sides
that could be marking seasons or could be marking a horizon.
These smaller circles could potentially be stars.
- [Tony] Experts believe that it dates back
to around 1800 BC, and if it does in fact
show celestial symbols,
it could be the oldest star map known to man.
- Many wonder if this isn't showing an older civilization
having settled earlier than expected.
If you were to lay this disc down on an altar,
the arcs on the side would line up to show you
roughly the Equinox, which could tell you
when you need to plant crops.
One hypothesis about this disc
is that it comes from a very advanced race
living in the Bronze Age.
For some, that leads to the question
of whether or not they were somehow involved
in alien technology, because these people were doing things
that were far more advanced than any other cultures.
- Others speculate that this disc
has a connection to another mysterious source,
a little-known Scandinavian sun cult
whose name has been lost to history.
Followers of this esoteric Nordic religion were
sun worshipers who portrayed solar symbols frequently
in rock carvings and other art.
So let's see if our experts can shed some light
on what, if anything,
their beliefs could have to do with this sky disc.
(tense music)
There's ample evidence that ancient humans
had knowledge of astronomy, as seen in famous sights
like Stonehenge, Machu Picchu and Chichen Itza.
So they probably didn't need extraterrestrial help,
but anthropologist Kathy Strain wonders if this artifact
is connected to cultures known for
their astronomical observations, could the Nebra sky disc
actually be an accurate star map?
- We have the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades right here,
and it's an indicator that whenever the crescent moon
was at this three quarters and you could see the Pleiades,
that you needed to add on to your calendar a leap month
so that you could keep your agriculture correct.
- [Tony] But archeologist Dr. Ed Barnhart isn't quite sure
that's what we're seeing here.
- One of the things that distinguished the Pleiades
from some of the other stars is that they're less bright.
If they were trying to depict a map of the sky,
they would not make the Pleiades as bright and large
as the other stars.
Even just this sun and the moon here,
it is physically impossible for this arrangement
to be this close in a single view.
It is not a map through which anyone
could match it to the sky.
- [Tony] But since some claim this disc
was able to keep track of the equinoxes,
could it have been some sort of ancient calendar?
- The smaller you try to make a circle like this
to observe the sun, the more exact position
you have to be in.
Something this small a scale can't really function
as an observatory.
- [Tony] Then is it possible this could simply be
an elaborate piece of ancient artwork?
- The fact that this is predominantly copper with bronze
as kind of flare points towards it being an object of art.
Copper is not good for making tools.
If we look at all of the Bronze Age objects that we have,
there are more pieces of art and jewelry
than there are weapons and tools.
- [Tony] But given the object's sketchy origins,
is there a chance this could just all be a hoax?
- There are people who have claimed
that the looters themselves created this as a hoax
in order to get more money.
However, the soil adhering to the back of it
match the exact location where the looters said they got it,
and you cannot fake the patina that is on this bronze piece.
We know it's very old based on that,
so I personally don't believe that it is a hoax.
(tense music)
- Our verdict?
This is almost certainly an authentic ancient artifact
depicting astronomical bodies.
However, it is still up for debate
whether it is the world's oldest star map
or just a piece of decorative art.
And that's our show for tonight.
Thank you so much for watching us and the stars,
and remember to keep those cameras rolling.
(dramatic theme music)