In October 1932, two prospectors blasting for gold in the San Pedro Mountains of Wyoming opened a small chamber that should not have existed, an interior pocket sealed behind several feet of solid rock. When the dust settled, they shined their lamps into the cavity and froze. Sitting upright on a small ledge was a fully formed, mummified being no taller than a human infant. Its legs were crossed. Its face was wizened, with a flattened nose and a mouth full of tiny, visible teeth. The miners thought at first they had found a child. But the proportions were wrong. The skull was abnormally round. The torso compact. The arms and hands small but well shaped. It looked, unmistakably, like a miniature adult.
News spread quickly. The mummy, later known as “Pedro,” after the San Pedro Mountains, was brought to Casper, Wyoming, where doctors, anthropologists, and reporters crowded to examine it. Photographs taken at the time show a desiccated figure roughly seven inches tall, darkened by age, with leathery skin and a face etched into what looked like a permanent grimace. The discovery gained immediate national attention, sparking arguments about folklore, physiology, and even the boundaries of human variation.
Early examinations produced strange results. Casper physician Dr. Harry Shapiro declared the body anatomically too developed to be an infant. The mummy had fully erupted teeth, including what appeared to be molars. The skull shape did not match any known congenital conditions. And the arms, though tiny, bore the hallmarks of adult proportions relative to the torso. Several observers noted the unusually wide, flattened head and the compactness of the ribcage. If it was a baby, they argued, it was unlike any the medical literature described.
X-rays taken in 1950, after the body changed hands and reached the American Museum of Natural History, deepened the mystery. Radiologists studying the films noted a complete skeletal structure, including unusually developed vertebrae, ribs, and long bones consistent with a small adult. One report described the skull as bearing a “massive calvarium” relative to the body. Others highlighted the presence of what looked like hardened tissue in the chest cavity, either internal organs or mineral deposits in their shape. Nothing about the X-rays pointed cleanly to an infant.
Yet a competing explanation emerged soon afterward. Some anthropologists suggested the mummy may have been a stillborn or premature Native American infant with anencephaly, a congenital condition that can cause skull deformities. But this theory was strongly challenged by others, who noted that the mummy’s facial structure, teeth, and overall development contradicted typical anencephalic morphology. Moreover, the body had sat in a cross-legged pose, a posture rarely associated with fetal remains.
The mystery sharpened when cultural parallels surfaced. Several tribes in the region had longstanding oral traditions about “little people”, tiny humanoid beings said to inhabit caves and mountains. The Shoshone referred to them as the Nimerigar, a race of small, sometimes hostile beings who wielded miniature weapons and fought among themselves. Though often treated as mythology, the discovery of a tiny, seated mummy in a sealed stone chamber sparked renewed interest in whether the legend may have had roots in physical tradition.
As scientific debate heated, the fate of the mummy took a strange turn. After circulation among collectors and brief periods of institutional study, Pedro eventually ended up in the ownership of a New York businessman. At some point in the 1960s or early 1970s, accounts vary, the mummy simply vanished. No museum currently claims it. No estate records list its transfer. Authorities cannot confirm whether it still exists somewhere in a private collection or whether it was lost, stolen, or destroyed. Only the photographs, X-rays, and news accounts remain.
Modern attempts to analyze the case struggle with the missing evidence. Without the body itself, contemporary DNA analysis cannot be performed. The X-rays, though instructive, are limited by the technology of their era. And while skeptics continue to argue for a congenital disorder, others note that no modern case matches the proportions and skeletal maturity documented in the films. The sealed nature of the chamber where the mummy was found only deepens the puzzle: no signs of intrusion suggested the body had been deliberately placed there long before miners opened the rock.
Today, the San Pedro Mountains Mummy sits at the intersection of folklore, forensic mystery, and lost artifact. Whether it represented an unusual medical case, a cultural ritual unknown to modern archaeology, or something that slips between categories entirely, its disappearance ensures one thing: the central question will almost certainly never be settled. A tiny seated mummy was found in the mountains of Wyoming. X-rays showed a humanlike skeleton. And then, when science finally had the tools to answer its secrets—it vanished.
Editor’s Note: This article is based on historical newspaper archives, museum records, medical reports, and X-ray analyses conducted between the 1930s and 1950s. Some narrative details reflect reconstructed testimony; the mummy’s disappearance prevents modern verification.
Sources & Further Reading:
– Casper Tribune and Associated Press coverage of the 1932 San Pedro mummy discovery
– American Museum of Natural History X-ray reports (1950 examinations)
– Wyoming State Archives: San Pedro Mountains accounts and witness statements
– Shoshone and Arapaho oral traditions referencing Nimerigar “little people”
– Analyses published in mid-20th century anthropological journals
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