The Petrification Hoax

In 1976, an art student recreated the piece using an iron beam, plaster and molded stucco wire in celebration of Colorado's centennial. After a brief road tour, it was put on display at El Pueblo History Museum before being buried between Pueblo and Bula in a marked plot near Highway 78 in 1984. The newspaper Alta, California ran a petrification spoof in 1858. It was presented as a letter from a bogus German scholar, Friedrich Lichtenberger, MD.