A bone rush may be underway in New York’s East River after a woolly mammoth expert revealed where 500,000 tusks were allegedly dumped.
Speaking on the Joe Rogan podcast, gold miner turned bone tycoon John Reeves said he wanted to start a ‘bone rush’ and mapped the location of 50 tonnes of mammoth tusks that could find at the bottom of the East River.
Reeves read a draft report from the Fairbanks Mining District in Alaska, which detailed the transport of 500,000 tusks from Fairbanks to the American Museum of Natural History in New York in the 1940s.
Reeves – who owns thousands of acres of mining land in the area and obtained the report from the company he bought, and spoke to its lead author, Richard Osborne of the University of Alaska – said that the museum “ran out of storage” and threw the bones away.
The report revealed the location of the dump site at East River Drive and 65th Street.
Woolly mammoth tusks can cost around $20,000 each depending on their condition, bringing the potential value at the bottom of the river to around $1 billion.
“If any of you want to go out and find some bones, I’ll tell you exactly where they are,” Reeves said, detailing the location. “They are guardians of discoverers. »
Some boners, the term used to refer to people in search of valuable bones, have already answered the call, sharing videos of their trips to the East River.
Alaskan gold miner turned mammoth expert John Reeves has revealed the location of 500,000 tusk bones believed to have been dumped in the middle of New York’s East River.
Citing the draft report, Reeves said gold miners shipped 500,000 tusks to New York because the owners saw “no value” in them.
“You have to remember it was 1928 to 1958,” Reeves told Rogan. “People, you know the miners, didn’t pick up the bones. »
According to the defenses report, “errors” were made about the “acceptable condition” of the bones shipped to New York.
“They took about a whole carload of these bones, they ran out of storage, and they dumped them in the East River,” Reeves said.
The tusks were eventually dumped in the river at the former New York Hospital dump site.
Reeves said the tusks were ‘mistakenly’ thrown along East River Drive near 65th Street
The revelation sparked a bone rush, with fortune seekers already on the river in search of the tusks, which could fetch $20,000 apiece
In total, the tusks, believed to have been thrown down in the 1940s, are worth up to $1 billion.
Although Reeves said the exact method and location of the discharge was unknown, he noted that the mammoth tusks were dense and would not float, suggesting they could still be somewhere at the bottom of the river.
Reeves mused, “If I listened to your podcast and had a boat and had some scuba gear? »
Rogan was also enamored with the prospect of the successful Bone Rush that Reeves was offering.
“Do you know how crazy it would be if there were f****** mammoth bones right there in the East River,” Rogan said.
“Man, let me tell you something about mammoth bones and mammoth tusks, they’re extremely valuable,” Reeves replied.
Alaskan miners who saw no value in the tusks would have shipped them to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Pictured: Tusks found in 1907 during an expedition to Alaska
Reeves (right) said he wanted to start a bone rush. The gold digger found thousands of preserved bones on his land
Reeves, a self-made millionaire, knows a little about the value of tusks after discovering perfectly preserved mammoth bones while panning for gold in Alaska.
Reeves, owner of Fairbanks Gold, LLC, owns thousands of acres of mining land along the state’s rivers.
In an interview with university researchers, Reeves described himself as a champion swimmer who went to college in Florida before dropping out and deciding to join prospectors in Alaska in search of gold.
In the 1980s, Reeves purchased a gold dredging site outside of Fairbanks, which was turned into a tourist site where visitors could pan for gold along the river. The site has since been sold to Holland America.
Reeves then expanded his stake in the Fairbanks mining lands, also purchasing state and federal lands.
In a 2012 National Geographic documentary about Ice Age fossil collectors in Alaska, Reeves boasted that he had found thousands of specimens on his land.
While his fellow miners joked that panning for gold was more lucrative, Reeves said he had become an avid collector of ancient bones.
“Mammoth tusks are more fun to watch,” he said. “I like them more than stacks of $100 bills. »
Since finding mammoth bones decades ago, Reeves has built up a collection dubbed the Boneyard Alaska that houses his rare specimens.
Pictured: woolly mammoth tusks found on Reeves land
The documentary “Boneyard Alaska,” which followed Reeves’ bone search earlier this year, echoed his passion for finding ancient bones.
“I’ve always been captivated by finding something in the ground or in the dirt that spoke to me a bit about our culture, where we came from and what was here before us,” Reeves said. in the movie. “Those cool things we find need to be saved. »
In the documentary, Reeves’ digs could be seen digging up 100 bones in a single day, with researchers touting that Reeves could recreate an entire herd of mammoths with his collection.
Reeves’ collection is particularly impressive because the permafrost in Alaska keeps the specimens perfectly preserved.
Not all news on the site expresses the views of the site, but we transmit this news automatically and translate it through programmatic technology on the site and not from a human editor.