Kingoodie Artifact

The Kingoodie artifact (also called Kingoodie hammer) is an object with the characteristics of a corroded iron nail, found in 1844 inside a block of sandstone at the Kingoodie Quarry, in Kingoodie, Scotland.

Discovery

David Brewster reported to the British Association for the Advancement of Science that the nail was found when a block of stone was being prepared for crushing. The nail was discovered when the clay covering the stone was removed, with 12.7 mm (0.50 inch) embedded in the clay and the rest of the nail lying along the surface of the stone, about an inch from its head. that was against the stone. It is not known from which part of the quarry the stone came, and it was handled at least four or five times between its discovery in the quarry and its transportation to the place where it was prepared. 141 years later in 1985, Dr. A. W. Medd of the British Geological Survey maintained that the stone in which the artifact was found was very ancient red sandstone (Devonian, between 360 and 408 million years old).^{[citation required]}

If this dating were correct, it would place it hundreds of millions of years (between 356 and 404 million) before the appearance of man on Earth. For this reason, the Kingoodie artifact is considered an 'Artifact out of its time'.

Skepticism

However, there are few references to this artifact and the mysteries surrounding its discovery were typical for the 19th century. Most of such mysteries were solved in the 20th century.