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The Coso Artifact entered popular memory as a riddle: a porcelain-and-metal cylinder pried out of what its discoverers called a half-million-year-old geode in the high desert above Owens Lake. The riddle was solved decades ago. Yet the case remains a useful teaching specimen, because it shows how a single misnamed rock and one unsourced age estimate can travel through three generations of fringe literature before a careful procedural reconstruction catches up.
Direct Answer
The Coso Artifact is a 1920s Champion spark plug encased in a natural iron-oxide concretion, found near Olancha, California, on February 13, 1961. Pierre Stromberg and Paul V. Heinrich, working with the Spark Plug Collectors of America, identified it definitively in 1999 and published the analysis in 2000. The matrix is not a geode and not 500,000 years old.
What the Discoverers Found in 1961
On the morning of February 13, 1961, Wallace Lane, Virginia Maxey, and Mike Mikesell were prospecting roughly six miles northeast of Olancha, California, at about 4,300 feet of elevation, gathering specimens for the small rock-and-gift shop the three of them ran. They picked up what they thought was a geode. The next day, back at the shop, Mikesell tried to halve it on a diamond saw and ruined the blade on something the saw was not meant to cut.
When the nodule opened, it revealed a perfectly circular section of very hard white material that looked like porcelain, with a 2-millimeter shaft of bright metal at its center that responded to a magnet. Around the cylinder was a hexagonal casing, and within it a layer of decomposing copper was said to surround the porcelain. The outer crust was reported to be encrusted with fossil shells and to hold two metal objects resembling a nail and a washer. Ron Calais, a creationist who was allowed to photograph and X-ray the nodule, brought it to the attention of the publishers of the INFO Journal, the magazine of the International Fortean Organization, whose Spring 1969 article by Ronald J. Willis, “The Coso Artifact,” remains the primary source on the object [1]. A geologist whom Maxey said she had consulted reportedly told her the nodule had taken at least 500,000 years to attain its present form, a figure she repeated in a letter to Desert Magazine in May 1961. The geologist was never named, the findings were never published, and the dating method was never described [2].
How the Half-Million-Year Claim Took Root
A claim does not need to be examined to be repeated. The Coso Artifact circulated in books on out-of-place artifacts (OOPArts) such as Rene Noorbergen’s Secrets of the Lost Races (1977), appeared briefly in a 1977 episode of the television series In Search Of… hosted by Leonard Nimoy, and was taken up by young-earth creationists. Donald Chittick, a chemist who lectured as an adjunct faculty member of the Institute for Creation Research, opened his “Puzzle of Ancient Man” lectures and his 1997 book of that title with it, as evidence that ancient civilizations were extremely advanced. Carl Baugh cited it in his online dissertation, and J. R. Jochmans, who claimed to have ghost-written most of Noorbergen’s book, promoted it as a possible electrical instrument in an article reprinted on creationist websites. The artifact’s appeal was structural: a recognisably modern object inside a stone said to be older than Homo sapiens is exactly the sort of anomaly that, if true, would topple the established chronology of human industry [3].
The trouble was that no one with appropriate credentials had ever published a description of either the object or its supposed matrix. The photographs and X-rays taken by Ron Calais, a creationist who was allowed to inspect the nodule and photograph it in natural light and X-ray, were the entire visual record in wide circulation. The object itself slipped out of public view after 1969, when the INFO Journal reported that Wallace Lane kept it on display in his home, refused to let anyone examine it, and had a standing offer to sell it for $25,000; it stayed with the family of one of the discoverers. The case rested almost entirely on a single sentence about an unnamed geologist’s estimate.
The Stromberg-Heinrich Investigation, 1999-2000
In 1999, Pierre Stromberg of the Pacific Northwest Skeptics began a methodical re-examination of the case with Paul V. Heinrich, a geologist and research associate at Louisiana State University. Their approach was procedural rather than rhetorical: identify the object first, then ask what the matrix could be. Stromberg circulated the existing X-rays to specialists who would actually recognise the components if they belonged to a known modern technology.
On September 9, 1999, Chad Windham, then president of the Spark Plug Collectors of America, telephoned Stromberg in reply to his letter. Windham had viewed the X-ray photographs. His first response was suspicion, not of the artifact, but of Stromberg, whom he half-believed was a fellow collector pulling an elaborate hoax, because the identification looked obvious to a trained eye. Windham named the object as a 1920s-era Champion spark plug, of a kind widely used in Ford Model T and Model A engines. Three other collectors, Bill Bond, the founder of the SPCA and curator of a private museum of more than two thousand plugs, Mike Healy, and the SPCA’s vice-president Jeff Bartheld, confirmed the identification over the following weeks [4]. The puzzling upper end was the brass “top hat” that caps the porcelain insulator on early Champion plugs; the hexagonal casing matched the plug’s hexagonal nut; the 2-millimeter shaft was the central electrode; and the “spring or helix” visible in Calais’s X-ray was the threading of the top hat’s terminal, onto which a top nut was normally screwed.
The Concretion, Not a Geode
The geological half of the analysis dealt with the matrix. A geode has a thin outer shell of chalcedonic silica and is filled with a layer of quartz crystals. The Coso nodule had neither. It was an iron-oxide nodule of the kind that forms around rusting iron and steel objects: the plug’s iron parts corroded almost completely, and the iron oxide bound the surrounding material, which Maxey herself called “hardened clay” with a collection of pebbles, into a mass with a hardness of only about 3 on the Mohs scale. Stromberg and Heinrich suggest the process was hastened by corrosive salt dust blown off the dry bed of Owens Lake, which lost its water to the Los Angeles Aqueduct after 1913 and was dry by 1926. Conservation handbooks show modern bolts, padlocks and belt buckles that have decayed into similar oxide nodules, a process of decades, not millennia [5].
There is also a plausible historical context for how a Ford-era spark plug came to be lying in the Coso Mountains. Mining operations were conducted in the area early in the twentieth century, and Stromberg and Heinrich concluded that the plug most likely powered a Ford Model T or Model A engine, perhaps one adapted to serve the mines. A worn plug discarded there and left to rust on the surface would produce exactly the nodule that Mike Mikesell tried to cut in half the day after it was picked up in February 1961.
The 2018 Re-examination and Its Implications
For nearly two decades after Stromberg and Heinrich published their conclusion in 2000 and, in print, in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2004 [6], the artifact itself was unavailable for direct study. In April 2018 the family of one of the original discoverers, who had kept the nodule as a curious heirloom and had long regarded it as an encased spark plug, wrote to Stromberg and invited him to examine it, and on May 16, 2018, he inspected both halves for an hour; the family has chosen to remain anonymous. The two halves together weighed 160 grams and measured three inches in length, the length of a 1920s Champion plug, and a hexagonal nut from a 7/8-inch, 18-thread Champion plug of that era fitted the nodule’s hexagonal cavity exactly. The brass top of the plug turned out to be protruding from the top of the nodule, and in July 2018 the geologist B. Charlotte Schreiber of the University of Washington’s Department of Earth and Space Sciences examined the artifact and, like Stromberg and Heinrich, found none of the fossil shells on which the 1961 age claim had rested. Skeptical Inquirer reported the find in its March-April 2019 issue and said Stromberg had arranged with the family and museum curators to display the artifact at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center in an exhibition titled “What Is Reality?” [7].
Stromberg and Heinrich reported no dissent among spark plug collectors about the identification. J. R. Jochmans wrote a rebuttal in 2009, printed in 2011 in the Bulletin of the Woodland Hills Rock Chippers, arguing that the object’s core was a sheath of petrified wood and that the threading did not match Champion plugs of the period; the 2018 inspection showed both claims to be wrong.
Why the Case Still Matters
A reader might ask, fairly, why an article should still be written about a case so thoroughly resolved. The honest answer is that the OOPArt framing has a longer half-life than its evidence. The Coso Artifact still appears in popular books, on social media threads, and in television documentaries as if the question were open. It is not. What the case offers, properly understood, is a clean worked example of how an artifact identification is supposed to go: examine the object before theorising about its age, consult specialists who would recognise the thing if it were ordinary, and let the simplest reconstruction that fits the evidence stand until something forces a revision.
For readers interested in the broader pattern, see our pillar guide to Historical and Archaeological Mysteries, where the difference between an unsolved question and an unexamined claim is the running theme.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was the Coso Artifact really 500,000 years old?
No. The age estimate came from an unnamed geologist who never published the assessment or the dating method. The matrix is an iron-oxide nodule of the kind that forms around rusting metal in decades, not millennia.
Who solved the case?
Pierre Stromberg of the Pacific Northwest Skeptics and Paul V. Heinrich, a geologist at Louisiana State University, working with Chad Windham and three other members of the Spark Plug Collectors of America. The identification was made in 1999 and published in 2000.
What kind of spark plug was it?
A 1920s Champion plug of a kind widely used in Ford Model T and Model A engines. In 2018 a 7/8-inch, 18-thread hexagonal nut from such a plug fitted the nodule’s hexagonal cavity exactly.
What is a concretion, and why did people mistake it for a geode?
A concretion is a hard mineral mass that forms when groundwater cements sediment around a nucleus. A geode is a hollow rock with crystal-lined interior. The Coso nodule looked like a geode from the outside but had no interior cavity and no crystal lining. It was an iron-oxide concretion seeded by the rusting spark plug.
Where is the artifact now?
It remains the property of the descendants of one of the original discoverers, who have chosen to stay anonymous. In 2019 Skeptical Inquirer reported that Stromberg had arranged for it to be displayed at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle in an exhibition called “What Is Reality?”
What is the INFO Journal, and what did it originally claim?
The INFO Journal was the publication of the International Fortean Organization, a society devoted to anomalous phenomena in the tradition of Charles Fort. Ronald J. Willis’s article “The Coso Artifact” in the Spring 1969 issue described the object’s appearance and the unsourced 500,000-year claim, and he and his brother Paul J. Willis, the journal’s editor, already suspected it was a spark plug but could not explain the threaded tip in the X-ray.
How does iron-oxide concretion form so quickly?
When iron rusts in the ground, the iron oxides bind the surrounding clay and pebbles into a hard mass; archaeological conservators have documented modern bolts, padlocks and buckles that have decayed into such oxide nodules. Stromberg and Heinrich suggest the process was hastened here by corrosive salt dust blown off the dry bed of Owens Lake, which lost its water to the Los Angeles Aqueduct after 1913 and was dry by 1926.
Why do popular sources still call the Coso Artifact a mystery?
Because the OOPArt framing was established before the resolution and is repeated by writers who have not read the 2000 paper or the account of the 2018 inspection. The scholarly question has been settled for over twenty years. The popular question keeps recirculating because it is a more entertaining one to keep open.
Did creationists really cite the Coso Artifact as evidence?
Yes. Donald Chittick, an adjunct faculty member of the Institute for Creation Research, opened his “Puzzle of Ancient Man” lectures with it, and had dropped it from his book and lectures by 2004 after Stromberg and Heinrich’s findings. Carl Baugh cited it in his dissertation, and J. R. Jochmans was among its earliest promoters; Jochmans’s 2009 attempt to rebut the spark-plug identification was shown to be incorrect in 2018.
Has any spark plug collector disputed the identification?
Stromberg and Heinrich reported none. Chad Windham, Bill Bond, Mike Healy and Jeff Bartheld all identified it as a 1920s Champion plug in 1999, and the authors wrote that there had been no dissent in the collector community about its origins.
Sources
- Pierre Stromberg and Paul V. Heinrich, The Coso Artifact: Mystery from the Depths of Time?, TalkOrigins Archive, 2000, updated 1 December 2018. talkorigins.org; Ronald J. Willis, The Coso Artifact, INFO Journal 1(4), Spring 1969, pp. 4-13 (as cited there); International Fortean Organization, Wikipedia. wikipedia.org
- Pierre Stromberg and Paul V. Heinrich, The Coso Artifact, Reports of the National Center for Science Education 24(2), March-April 2004. ncse.ngo; Coso artifact, Wikipedia, citing Virginia Maxey’s letter in Desert Magazine 25(5), May 1961. wikipedia.org
- Kat Eschner, When Some 1920s Garbage Was Mistaken for an Ancient Artifact, Smithsonian Magazine, 13 February 2017. smithsonianmag.com; Stromberg and Heinrich, TalkOrigins Archive, section “The Creationists and the Artifact”. talkorigins.org
- Pierre Stromberg and Paul V. Heinrich, The Coso Artifact, Reports of the National Center for Science Education 24(2), March-April 2004. ncse.ngo; TalkOrigins Archive version, section “Comparisons and Analysis”. talkorigins.org
- Stromberg and Heinrich, TalkOrigins Archive, sections “The Geologic Evidence” and “Comparisons and Analysis”, citing J. M. Cronyn, The Elements of Archaeological Conservation, Routledge, 1990. talkorigins.org; Owens Lake, Wikipedia. wikipedia.org
- Pierre Stromberg and Paul V. Heinrich, The Coso Artifact, Reports of the National Center for Science Education 24(2), March-April 2004, pp. 26-30. ncse.ngo
- Coso Artifact Decisively Identified—and It’s Hardly Ancient, Skeptical Inquirer 43(2), March/April 2019, pp. 10-11. skepticalinquirer.org; Stromberg and Heinrich, TalkOrigins Archive, sections “An Unexpected Development” and “The 2018 Inspection”, updated 1 December 2018. talkorigins.org