Man Catches Huge Alligator With Priceless Object Discovered Inside It

A man was left stunned after discovering priceless artefacts inside the stomach of a 13ft alligator.

The huge 750-pound (53 stone) reptile from Mississippi was dissected by Shane Smith, who runs a processing plant, reports Mississippi Clarion Ledger (MCL).

John Hamilton presented the croc to Shane's Red Antler Processing plant in Yazoo City.

John wrote on his Facebook page: "The hunt of a lifetime! I want to say thanks to my team Jordan Hackl, Todd Hollingsworth, Landon Hollingsworth, and Drew Berryhill we had a hunt that we will never forget. To start with we tagged a 6.7 with banded tags.

"Then we caught the 13.5 that weighed 750.5 lbs (53 stone) we took him to Red Antler Processing to be skinned and processed and they found a arrowhead in his belly. What a hunt!"

Facebook/John Hamilton

They found a 'broken arrowhead' and 'plummet' (a heavy tear-shaped object), which, historians say, are two stones that were used by Native Americans.

James Starnes, director of surface geology for the Mississippi Office of Geology, told the same publication the arrowhead likely dated back to between 5000-6000 BC, while the plummet dated from around 1700 BC.

Starnes added that 'we really have no idea' what plummets were used for.

Red Antler Processing's Facebook page read: "We have been cutting into a few big gators to see what was in their stomach. Everyone so far has had something cool in it.

"The 13-foot 5-inch gator brought in by John Hamilton today, produced the shock of the year!"

Shane told MCL: "Everybody was standing around like I was opening a Christmas present.

"We kind of put it all in a bin.

"I looked over and saw a rock with a different tint to it. It was the arrowhead.

"It was just disbelief. There's just no way he had an arrowhead.

"We joked about it and said I'm probably the only person on Earth to pull an arrowhead out of an alligator's stomach."

Facebook/John Hamilton

Starnes told AL: "You could imagine that material eroding from an archaeological site on the bank.

"[It] would be no different than gravel to an alligator.

"It's a plummet and a broken projectile point: Common things to be found on sites in the Mississippi delta region. Especially along the banks of oxbow lakes and bayous."

Topics: History, US News, Alligator, Animals

Anish Vij

@Anish_Vij