April 1, 2021 • 9 mins
Today we get right down to the bones of some great stories. To say more, though, would spoil the surprise, so let's begin our tour.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production
of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world
is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an
open book, all of these amazing tales are right there
on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to
(00:26):
the Cabinet of Curiosities. When we think of paleontology, we
think of dusty faced scientists crouching over a gaping hole
in the dirt. We think of sunlight gently illuminating a
creature that has not been seen in millions of years.
(00:47):
What we don't think about is crime. Real science is
not like the movies. You don't find any clone dinosaurs
wreaking havoc across an island theme park in our day.
But that doesn't mean an area like paleont apology is
free from controversy. Eric Procopy should know. He was one
of the field's most controversial figures to date. He started
(01:08):
collecting fossils and animal remains from a young age, diving
for shark teeth in Florida when he was only ten
years old. His parents, however, quickly grew tired of his
hobby for one thing. They were running out of room
to store it all. They told him that if he
wanted to keep anything, he had to start unloading some
of his collection. Procopy turned to auction houses and the Internet,
(01:29):
where he would sell fossils to the highest bidder. Then
he would funnel that money into acquiring and re selling
bigger and better items. By two thousand twelve, Procopy had
graduated from shark teeth all the way up to dinosaur skeletons.
One such item had come into the fossil hunter's hands,
and he was looking for a buyer. It was a
skeleton belonging to the Tyrannosaurus batar, a relative of the
(01:51):
Tyrannosaurus rex that had lived in Mongolia millions of years ago.
It was a part of the world that had been
a hotbed of paleontological activity since famous scientist Roy Chabin
Andrews first discovered fossils in the region during the nineteen twenties.
Procopy brought the skeleton from Mongolia into Great Britain before
having its shipped to the United States. However, he declared
(02:13):
it on US customs forms as having originated in the
United Kingdom, not Mongolia. Once it landed in America, it
didn't take long for a buyer to emerge, and Procopy
set up a sail for the dinosaur's bones in New York.
It seemed everything was going fine until Mongolian officials got
the word of the impending sail. They stepped in and
filed the restraining order, putting a halt to the transaction.
(02:36):
According to their records, Procopy had not come to the
possession of the Tyrannosaurus skeleton legally. It had been stolen.
The constitution of Mongolia stated that any dinosaur fossil found
within the country's borders were automatically deemed culturally significant and
must be authorized by removal by the governments. Procopy had
never sought government approval. Instead, he had just smuggled the skeleton,
(02:59):
not of the entreat with the goal of a major payout.
Dr Bolarmngin, a Mongolian paleontologist, was the person who had
recognized the skeleton as having belonged to her home country
and not to the United Kingdom as had been previously stated.
Procopy claimed that it was impossible to know where the
specimen had come from exactly, as the same species of
dinosaur had also been discovered in China. His protests didn't
(03:23):
matter in the end, though, and he was arrested in
October of two thousand twelve for smuggling the Trantosaurus patar skeleton,
as well as two others without prior authorization. Procopy was
known to have an eclectic list of clients. These included
celebrities and high powered lawyers who paid top dollar for
rare fossils, which they would put on display in their
homes and businesses. In fact, a Tyrannosaurus batar skull was
(03:47):
sold back in two thousand seven to someone who even
beat out Leonardo DiCaprio for the privilege of owning it.
Though Procopy was not believed to have participated in the sale,
the gallery it was purchased from had bought items from
him in the past, and the owner of such a
special item it was none other than actor Nicolas Cage,
who had started to hit films about a famous treasure hunter.
(04:10):
He didn't know the skull was stolen at the time.
Homeland Security explained the story behind its provenance, and the
actor agreed to relinquish it back to Mongolia where it belonged.
The skull was so much more than a collector's item
or a piece of home decor. It had been an
important part of Mongolia's past, and like nicholas Cage to America,
(04:30):
it was truly a national treasure. Every living thing has
a story to tell us. It's life is comprised of
joy and sorrow, success and failure. However, the stories don't
(04:54):
end when a thing dies. For one particular creature, there's
still quite a lot to say Moby Dick Herman Melville's
epic tale of Revenge starts in the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
The narrator, Ishmael, goes there to join a whaling vessel
seeking adventure. From there, he befriends the South Pacific chieftain,
who accompanies him on his journey aboard the Pequad, which
(05:17):
is led by the one legged captain Ahab. Melville's novel
eventually solidified the author as one of the great American
novelists of his day and illustrated New Bedford's importance to
the whaling industry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However,
the Pennsylvania oil rush of eighteen fifty nine put whaling
and New Bedford on notice. Petroleum was now a readily
(05:38):
available resource and could be used to heat lamps, make candles,
and do everything that whale oil had been doing for
hundreds of years. The city pivoted to other industries to
stay alive, including manufacturing and fishing, but whaling would still
remain an important part of its history, So important, in fact,
that in nineteen o three a journalist named Ellis L.
(05:59):
Howland proposed a museum to be built to preserve the
remains of New Bedford's past. Oil Magnate Henry Huddleson Rodgers agreed,
and three years later he donated a bank building for
such a purpose. In nineteen oh seven, the New Bedford
Whaling Museum opened to the public, and over the next
two decades it would grow in both size and number
(06:19):
of exhibits on display. Tourists from all over came to visit,
especially in nineteen thirty six, when the first of five
complete whale skeletons made their debut. They called it Quasimodo,
a fitting name for a humpback whale that had died
in nineteen thirty two. As time passed and the museum
continued to increase its offerings, more skeletons found their way
(06:41):
to New Bedford, including a thirty year old sperm whale
measuring forty eight feet long, and a forty nine foot
whale named Raina, as well as her unborn baby, and
the biggest skeleton of the bunch, Cobo. Cobo, or King
of the Blue Ocean, was a sixty six ft long
blue whale that had been struck by a tanker in
(07:02):
Blue whales were already endangered when the accident occurred, with
roughly five hundreds still living in the North Atlantic. After
it was struck and killed, the whales carcass was studied
by various research facilities, with pieces of it being sent
all over the globe for examination. As part of Cobo's necropsy,
it was discovered that he had been involved in another accident,
(07:22):
one that had broken his jaw and left a deep
gash in the bone. The skeleton that remained was given
to the new Bedford Whaling Museum, which carried out a
thorough cleaning process to get it ready for display. Experts
separated it and placed the various bone pieces into twenty
two separate cages. These cages were then submerged into the
harbor to let fish and other creatures nibble away at
(07:44):
the remaining flesh. Saving Museum volunteers from the hassle. The
cages were then removed from the water five months later,
and the skeleton was brought to the museum's courtyard to
lay under the cleansing light of the sun. It took
a while, but the bones eventually dried out, and Museum
of Ashal started assembling the skeleton for display. Unfortunately, they
had another problem on their hands, whale oil. Whales had
(08:08):
been harvested all those years ago for a reason. They
produced a lot of oil, and Cobo was no exception.
His bones were so coated in oil they had yellowed
and started to smell. To counteract the oil's effects, the
skeleton was treated with the solution normally used to cure leather,
and it worked. The bones lost both their yellow color
and their odor, and were soon hung in the museum's lobby.
(08:31):
Cobo now greeted visitors from high above the front doors,
but people are worn to keep an eye out because
although he's been dead for the last twenty years and
is now nothing but a skeleton, Cobo's remains still produce oil,
which drips from his bones onto a platform below. Seeing
the educational value in the oil, the museum gathers it
(08:52):
into a Beaker to teach people about whale oil and
its many properties, while Cobo just sort of hangs around.
I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
(09:15):
The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership
with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
and you can learn all about it over at the
World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production
of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world
is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an
open book, all of these amazing tales are right there
on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to
(00:26):
the Cabinet of Curiosities. When we think of paleontology, we
think of dusty faced scientists crouching over a gaping hole
in the dirt. We think of sunlight gently illuminating a
creature that has not been seen in millions of years.
(00:47):
What we don't think about is crime. Real science is
not like the movies. You don't find any clone dinosaurs
wreaking havoc across an island theme park in our day.
But that doesn't mean an area like paleont apology is
free from controversy. Eric Procopy should know. He was one
of the field's most controversial figures to date. He started
(01:08):
collecting fossils and animal remains from a young age, diving
for shark teeth in Florida when he was only ten
years old. His parents, however, quickly grew tired of his
hobby for one thing. They were running out of room
to store it all. They told him that if he
wanted to keep anything, he had to start unloading some
of his collection. Procopy turned to auction houses and the Internet,
(01:29):
where he would sell fossils to the highest bidder. Then
he would funnel that money into acquiring and re selling
bigger and better items. By two thousand twelve, Procopy had
graduated from shark teeth all the way up to dinosaur skeletons.
One such item had come into the fossil hunter's hands,
and he was looking for a buyer. It was a
skeleton belonging to the Tyrannosaurus batar, a relative of the
(01:51):
Tyrannosaurus rex that had lived in Mongolia millions of years ago.
It was a part of the world that had been
a hotbed of paleontological activity since famous scientist Roy Chabin
Andrews first discovered fossils in the region during the nineteen twenties.
Procopy brought the skeleton from Mongolia into Great Britain before
having its shipped to the United States. However, he declared
(02:13):
it on US customs forms as having originated in the
United Kingdom, not Mongolia. Once it landed in America, it
didn't take long for a buyer to emerge, and Procopy
set up a sail for the dinosaur's bones in New York.
It seemed everything was going fine until Mongolian officials got
the word of the impending sail. They stepped in and
filed the restraining order, putting a halt to the transaction.
(02:36):
According to their records, Procopy had not come to the
possession of the Tyrannosaurus skeleton legally. It had been stolen.
The constitution of Mongolia stated that any dinosaur fossil found
within the country's borders were automatically deemed culturally significant and
must be authorized by removal by the governments. Procopy had
never sought government approval. Instead, he had just smuggled the skeleton,
(02:59):
not of the entreat with the goal of a major payout.
Dr Bolarmngin, a Mongolian paleontologist, was the person who had
recognized the skeleton as having belonged to her home country
and not to the United Kingdom as had been previously stated.
Procopy claimed that it was impossible to know where the
specimen had come from exactly, as the same species of
dinosaur had also been discovered in China. His protests didn't
(03:23):
matter in the end, though, and he was arrested in
October of two thousand twelve for smuggling the Trantosaurus patar skeleton,
as well as two others without prior authorization. Procopy was
known to have an eclectic list of clients. These included
celebrities and high powered lawyers who paid top dollar for
rare fossils, which they would put on display in their
homes and businesses. In fact, a Tyrannosaurus batar skull was
(03:47):
sold back in two thousand seven to someone who even
beat out Leonardo DiCaprio for the privilege of owning it.
Though Procopy was not believed to have participated in the sale,
the gallery it was purchased from had bought items from
him in the past, and the owner of such a
special item it was none other than actor Nicolas Cage,
who had started to hit films about a famous treasure hunter.
(04:10):
He didn't know the skull was stolen at the time.
Homeland Security explained the story behind its provenance, and the
actor agreed to relinquish it back to Mongolia where it belonged.
The skull was so much more than a collector's item
or a piece of home decor. It had been an
important part of Mongolia's past, and like nicholas Cage to America,
(04:30):
it was truly a national treasure. Every living thing has
a story to tell us. It's life is comprised of
joy and sorrow, success and failure. However, the stories don't
(04:54):
end when a thing dies. For one particular creature, there's
still quite a lot to say Moby Dick Herman Melville's
epic tale of Revenge starts in the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
The narrator, Ishmael, goes there to join a whaling vessel
seeking adventure. From there, he befriends the South Pacific chieftain,
who accompanies him on his journey aboard the Pequad, which
(05:17):
is led by the one legged captain Ahab. Melville's novel
eventually solidified the author as one of the great American
novelists of his day and illustrated New Bedford's importance to
the whaling industry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However,
the Pennsylvania oil rush of eighteen fifty nine put whaling
and New Bedford on notice. Petroleum was now a readily
(05:38):
available resource and could be used to heat lamps, make candles,
and do everything that whale oil had been doing for
hundreds of years. The city pivoted to other industries to
stay alive, including manufacturing and fishing, but whaling would still
remain an important part of its history, So important, in fact,
that in nineteen o three a journalist named Ellis L.
(05:59):
Howland proposed a museum to be built to preserve the
remains of New Bedford's past. Oil Magnate Henry Huddleson Rodgers agreed,
and three years later he donated a bank building for
such a purpose. In nineteen oh seven, the New Bedford
Whaling Museum opened to the public, and over the next
two decades it would grow in both size and number
(06:19):
of exhibits on display. Tourists from all over came to visit,
especially in nineteen thirty six, when the first of five
complete whale skeletons made their debut. They called it Quasimodo,
a fitting name for a humpback whale that had died
in nineteen thirty two. As time passed and the museum
continued to increase its offerings, more skeletons found their way
(06:41):
to New Bedford, including a thirty year old sperm whale
measuring forty eight feet long, and a forty nine foot
whale named Raina, as well as her unborn baby, and
the biggest skeleton of the bunch, Cobo. Cobo, or King
of the Blue Ocean, was a sixty six ft long
blue whale that had been struck by a tanker in
(07:02):
Blue whales were already endangered when the accident occurred, with
roughly five hundreds still living in the North Atlantic. After
it was struck and killed, the whales carcass was studied
by various research facilities, with pieces of it being sent
all over the globe for examination. As part of Cobo's necropsy,
it was discovered that he had been involved in another accident,
(07:22):
one that had broken his jaw and left a deep
gash in the bone. The skeleton that remained was given
to the new Bedford Whaling Museum, which carried out a
thorough cleaning process to get it ready for display. Experts
separated it and placed the various bone pieces into twenty
two separate cages. These cages were then submerged into the
harbor to let fish and other creatures nibble away at
(07:44):
the remaining flesh. Saving Museum volunteers from the hassle. The
cages were then removed from the water five months later,
and the skeleton was brought to the museum's courtyard to
lay under the cleansing light of the sun. It took
a while, but the bones eventually dried out, and Museum
of Ashal started assembling the skeleton for display. Unfortunately, they
had another problem on their hands, whale oil. Whales had
(08:08):
been harvested all those years ago for a reason. They
produced a lot of oil, and Cobo was no exception.
His bones were so coated in oil they had yellowed
and started to smell. To counteract the oil's effects, the
skeleton was treated with the solution normally used to cure leather,
and it worked. The bones lost both their yellow color
and their odor, and were soon hung in the museum's lobby.
(08:31):
Cobo now greeted visitors from high above the front doors,
but people are worn to keep an eye out because
although he's been dead for the last twenty years and
is now nothing but a skeleton, Cobo's remains still produce oil,
which drips from his bones onto a platform below. Seeing
the educational value in the oil, the museum gathers it
(08:52):
into a Beaker to teach people about whale oil and
its many properties, while Cobo just sort of hangs around.
I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
(09:15):
The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership
with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
and you can learn all about it over at the
World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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