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You know what?

I've been around for a while.

I've travelled the world, met some interesting people,

done some crazy things.

So, you might just think

there's not much that could take me by surprise.

You'd be wrong.

The world is full of stories and science

and things that amaze and confound me

every single day,

incredible mysteries that keep me awake at night.

Some I can answer.

Others just defy logic.

Does the brain have the power to kill?

Can the mind become our most powerful weapon?

The U.S. Army investigates the paranormal,

asking if future conflicts

could be fought using mind control.

A boy loses his thumb in a horrific accident,

only to have it grow back,

thanks to a mysterious magical powder.

Can we really regenerate our limbs?

And in Indonesia --

an incredible archeological find.

Did humans once share the earth

with a race of hobbits?

Yup...

it's a weird world.

And I love it.

Throughout time,

magicians, psychics and mentalists

have claimed that they can move or lift objects,

walk through walls

and affect the outcome of events --

or even cause bodily harm, using only the power of thought.

But do these paranormal powers actually exist?

Can humans really use their mind to affect matter?

"But come on," I hear you say,

"Psychic power, for real?"

"What levelheaded person

"would possibly take such a crazy idea seriously?"

Well, how about the United States Army?

One, two, three, four!

William Shatner: In the late 1970s,

the U.S. military did something very strange.

A group of top soldiers

started to investigate whether the mind

could be used as a weapon.

Among them was U.S. Army colonel

John Alexander.

We had been blindsided

by the Soviets on several occasions,

and so, we had some senior leaders

who were willing to explore,

uh, very unique areas.

And paranormal phenomena was one of those.

William Shatner: The Army set up a top-secret outfit

called the Stargate Project

to harness paranormal powers for military use.

Some soldiers felt they had already

experienced the paranormal,

while advancing through enemy territory

in the jungles of Vietnam.

They called it point man syndrome.

John Alexander: When certain people are on point,

uh, they sense things, like where are mines,

where are ambushes and whatnot.

Other people don't have that.

Why? Don't know.

William Shatner: John Alexander

investigated psychokinesis,

the ability to move objects just by thinking.

His experimentation started with spoon bending.

We had a session at my house.

General Stubblebine,

who was the head of INSCOM at the time,

was present,

and we had a truly phenomenal event

occur directly in front of us.

William Shatner: At this top-secret session,

a psychic was asked to demonstrate

the power of the mind.

The guy held up a fork,

and this thing just dropped over 90 degrees.

And we saw that, and we said,

"Wow, need to look into

"how you can do that sort of thing."

And so, that led to the process,

and we set up a program to do that.

I ended up being able to teach this,

and we used it,

not because bending cutlery makes any sense at all.

It was to get mindset.

It was how do you convince people not to think

within the box, if you will.

William Shatner: Alexander focused his unit's time and resources

into learning this psychokinesis.

Amazingly, it wasn't long before he started to get results.

This particular one was a lieutenant colonel.

He was holding these forks just like this.

They used to be matched.

Um, this thing dropped over a full 90 degrees,

with all of us watching,

came back up

and went to where it is now.

And you can see...

that however you look at it,

those are dramatically different --

absolutely no physical force involved.

William Shatner: Encouraged by their fork-bending success,

Alexander and General Stubblebine

started programs to train soldiers

to use other paranormal powers,

like remote viewing.

Remote viewing is a means of data acquisition.

I guess you'd colloquially call it psychic spying.

Uh, you had an individual who was in a chamber --

in that case, usually, at Fort Meade.

They were given specific targets,

although they knew nothing about the target--

And said,

"Tell us about what's going on at that location."

William Shatner: The Russians had built a huge concrete structure,

but U.S. intelligence had no idea what it was for.

Alexander asked remote viewer number one,

Joe McMoneagle,

to use his psychic powers to see inside.

And he described the building.

All they gave him, initially, by the way, were coordinates.

Described the building,

then went inside, looked and says,

"There's a big submarine in there,"

and he described it and says, "It's double hulled."

"Most interesting

"is that the missiles are forward of the sail."

Before that, all of them had been behind --

and a number of other technologies,

to which our boat builder said, "You can't do that."

"If you build a submarine that big,

"it would go to depth and crush and whatnot."

Well, guess what?

It became known as the Typhoon class submarine.

Again, our intelligence community

had totally missed it

because we had not heard that there were changes coming,

and we also did not believe --

you know, this cerebral centrism --

that anybody else could do it.

Unknown to the U.S., the Russians had developed

a new, ultra-secret class of submarine,

the largest in the world,

with multiple titanium pressure hulls.

And now, thanks to the supposed

paranormal power of a U.S. Army soldier,

the Russians' secret was out.

Was this result an incredible stroke of luck,

a coincidence,

or had the military application of remote viewing,

psychic espionage,

actually paid off?

There's usually a pretty simple explanation

for what seems to be an extraordinary event.

William Shatner: Jim Underdown has devoted his life

to testing claims of paranormal powers.

We take it upon ourselves to use science to explain

why some people hold some of these beliefs.

William Shatner: The Center for Inquiry

invites people to prove their powers

in a scientifically sound testing environment.

We had a woman who, um,

claimed to look inside the human body

and tell if a kidney was missing or not.

Uh, she failed her test.

We had people who claimed to be able to send words

from one person to another.

Um, he failed.

So, lots of people come forward with these claims.

Zero are successful.

William Shatner: In fact, Underdown thinks

their claimed powers have more to do with magicians

than with the supernatural.

Magicians are helpful in making inquiries

into some of these claims

because we suspect fraud sometimes,

and sometimes, the simplest parlour magic trick

is employed in the guise of supernatural power.

William Shatner: Skeptic investigator and magician Mark Edward

knows how spoon bending is done,

and it's got nothing to do with paranormal powers.

A lot of people are interested in spoon bending,

so I'm gonna just show you

how easy it really is, if you focus your mind.

So, focus on "bend."

Think of "bend."

Yeah, yes, I can feel it starting to loosen.

Yes, slightly.

A little more.

Keep concentrating.

There we go, yes.

Jim: Whoa!

A lot of psychic energy in the room,

and let's just try and get this part.

This is really good.

You'll see it just droop.

William Shatner: Mark is a magician,

so he can't reveal how the trick is done,

but it goes something like this.

The spoon is already bent,

but Mark is hiding the handle behind his fingers.

Mark has a false handle,

which he pinches to make it look like the spoon is straight.

Releasing his grip makes the false handle drop,

so it looks like the spoon is bending.

When Mark shows us the bent spoon,

he's actually diverting attention away from the fact

he's pocketing the false handle.

Try and get this part. This is really good.

It is impossible to think

that the spoon could bend on its own

without cheating.

In order for the spoon to bend on its own,

you have to cheat.

There is no physical way to do that.

William Shatner: For Jim Underdown, spoon bending is representative

of the vast majority of claims of paranormal ability,

including the ones researched by the U.S. Army.

So, did the U.S. military waste millions of tax dollars

on paranormal research?

After all, it's all nonsense, right?

Well, maybe not.

You see, it's not just the Army

that has taken such spookiness seriously.

Researchers at Stanford and Princeton universities

studied phenomena like ESP and psychokinesis

for 30 years.

And today,

some scientists believe laboratory evidence

for such psychic ability might actually exist.

♪

William Shatner: Can we move distant objects

and even kill people

just by using our minds?

In the late 1970s,

the U.S. military decided

to investigate the power of psychokinesis.

Dean Radin is a parapsychologist

at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

He's devised an experiment

intended to produce evidence that psychokinesis

might actually exist.

This is an experiment looking at the relationship

between mind and matter.

William Shatner: Radin believes the human mind

is capable of interacting with something

far smaller than spoons --

photons,

the subatomic particles that make up light.

Lisa is asked to place her attention

on an optical system, which has a laser beam in it.

William Shatner: Hidden from view,

a laser shoots a beam of photons

through two tiny slits etched in a slide

to create an interference pattern.

Dean Radin: She's at a distance.

She's not able to see the beam itself,

but she's asked to imagine that she could see the beam.

William Shatner: According to his theory,

if psychokinesis exists,

the subject should be able to influence

the nature of the interference pattern

just by thinking about the photons.

Dean Radin: This picture here is showing what the camera sees

in the double-slit system.

And here, we're measuring what's happening in her brain.

So, we want to see, is there a relationship

between the EEG and the interference pattern?

If we can show that the relationship exists,

then that's showing a mind/matter interconnection.

William Shatner: The experiment begins.

Computer: Welcome to the double-slit experiment.

Please relax.

Okay.

Computer: Please influence the beam now.

William Shatner: The subject is asked to imagine,

in her mind's eye, the interference pattern.

Computer: You may now relax.

William Shatner: Then she's told to ignore the pattern completely.

At the conclusion of the experiment,

the images of the interference pattern

are compared to the EEG readout.

Dean Radin: These--

These colours are showing the degree of correlation.

If it's positive, we get a redder colour,

and so, this is interesting.

This suggests that when Lisa

is paying attention to the optical system,

we actually see a change in the optical system,

even though she's doing it in her mind.

William Shatner: Could this be coincidence?

Dean Radin: If we see red,

it means that there's a relationship.

If we see this kind of red,

it means it's a highly significant relationship.

It's meaningful

that the relationship that we're seeing is not chance.

It's a real effect.

William Shatner: So, maybe the mind can affect matter, after all.

However, Radin's findings are controversial,

and the majority of scientists remain skeptical

about psychokinesis.

Nevertheless,

anecdotal reports suggest that the U.S. military

restarted its paranormal research

in the wake of 9/11.

Probably, the biggest thing that happened

was causing people to think and think differently

and to think beyond the realm of the possible,

as they knew it.

So, whether psychokinesis

turns out to be a genuine phenomena,

embraced by those with open minds,

or merely cynical sleights of hand,

the U.S. military's investigation

into whether the mind could be used as a psychic weapon

is definitely...

weird, or what?

A boy loses his thumb in a horrific accident,

only to have it grow back.

Can we really regenerate our limbs?

♪

Ow!

Almost lost a finger there.

Need to hang onto that little pinky for a while yet.

But did you know that if I were a salamander or a newt,

it wouldn't be such a big deal?

If they lose a limb or a tail, they can grow another.

Wouldn't that kind of ability be cool?

But why would a newt be chopping vegetables?

Oh!

But could humans do the same

and regenerate their limbs?

Sounds like science fiction.

Well, it's not.

As this next story will show,

the future is most definitely here.

2009, South Florida.

A typical day for the Meraz family.

Father Froylan goes outside

to begin washing the family car.

He is accompanied by his two small sons,

Froylan Junior and 14-month-old Jeevan,

while mother Jeanette is inside.

What happened next would be

the beginning of a bizarre journey

into the scientific unknown.

Froylan Meraz: He was stepping out.

He was coming out from the house to the outside,

when Jeevan was following him.

He never noticed

that Jeevan was behind him.

He shut the door like a "normally" kid will do,

and, um, Jeevan was grabbing the edge of the door,

and he shut the door.

William Shatner: In an instant, Jeevan's right thumb is cut off,

just below the nail.

I grabbed some rag --

a towel from the kitchen.

So, I put it around his finger.

Froylan Meraz: So, we were like, "We need to rush,"

yeah, 'cause he was losing a lot of blood.

I believe she was on her second towel,

um, I mean, of blood.

So, we just rushed to the hospital.

William Shatner: As they rush to get medical help,

Jeanette and Froylan have no idea

just how badly injured their son is.

The toddler's thumb receives treatment,

but the parents are told

that since the rest of his thumb is missing,

the boy's thumb will be disfigured for life.

We were at the hospital and waiting for the results.

The doctor told us that,

probably, he was gonna

lose his thumb.

And that was a bad news for us, at the moment.

William Shatner: The Meraz family is devastated.

They believe their youngest son will be permanently scarred

and partially disabled.

But days later, their pediatrician offers some hope.

He sends them to see a doctor named Juan Bravo.

He has a controversial new treatment that can improve

Jeevan's condition.

The product simply is a powder and is applied to the wound bed,

and, pretty much, you reapply

and reapply every 24, 48 hours,

and the tissue regenerates underneath it.

William Shatner: Could Jeevan's finger be saved

simply by using a magic powder?

It's an extraordinary claim.

We called the mother,

and I remember I called her and said,

"Listen, we've come upon a product

"that is supposed to be great for fingers."

"I got pictures to show you."

"It should not have any side effects

"or any future complications for him,

"and, um, we would like to try it with him."

And, uh, she was all up for it.

William Shatner: But Bravo's magic powder

had never been used on a baby before.

With no guarantee of success,

Jeanette and Froylan would have to take a risk.

It was the first time that they had used that on a baby.

So, I mean, I believe they--

it was a first trial,

and we give them the yes.

William Shatner: Knowing little of the treatment's

mysterious healing power,

only days after the first application,

Jeanette and Froylan checked Jeevan's wound.

What they found was astonishing.

We started seeing that his finger

was starting to get a shape.

We were surprised.

We never thought it was gonna work.

We applied powder every 48 hours for the first two weeks,

and then we spread it out to three times a week,

the third week.

And this really was no need, after the third week.

William Shatner: It seems like science fiction.

In just over three weeks,

the seemingly miraculous has occurred.

After severing his digit,

Jeevan's thumb has grown back --

nail, fingerprint and all.

It looks like 99 per cent

equal to his left thumb.

Juan Bravo: When we finally removed the scab

that was formed by the magic dust,

what was underneath it, it was normal skin.

It was a normal finger.

It was like it never happened.

It's hard to believe that this finger was gonna

regenerate that fast and heal that fast.

I'm very happy.

Yeah, I felt very happy

to see that, um,

his finger was grown.

William Shatner: But did the powder alone regenerate Jeevan's thumb?

If so, how?

Many pediatricians

and other medical experts are skeptical.

They believe Jeevan's thumb regenerating

is not that surprising.

It's an ability that starts in the womb.

Steve Badylak: We know that we can--

That pretty serious injuries

in fetuses can be completely healed --

normal, like there was never an injury.

What we do know,

and I think everybody would agree,

is that young children, for example,

if they cut off the tips of their fingers,

they can occasionally re-grow them.

That's not a miracle.

It was gonna happen anyway.

William Shatner: But in 2005,

something extraordinary happened.

What is less easy to explain

is when you--

You get an individual like a Lee Spievack.

William Shatner: In 2004,

Lee Spievack, a 60-year-old man,

had the tip of his finger cut off

in a gruesome accident

caused by a model airplane propeller.

Weeks later, his finger grew back.

It was the first documented case of an adult

regenerating a body part.

Remarkably, Lee Spievack's doctor

suggested using the same powder

Dr. Bravo applied four years later on Jeevan.

Did it do the impossible

and regenerate an adult human's finger?

Dr. Ashkan Ghavami is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon.

He believes that it's impossible, even in an adult.

Well, limb generation itself,

limb regeneration itself,

is more possible in salamanders

and the lizard family.

In human beings, uh,

you can regenerate skin, but to actually

regenerate all the parts of a limb --

the bones, the skin, the soft tissue, fat,

tendons, nerves --

that's impossible, for that to occur.

William Shatner: Impossible?

So, if the controversial and mysterious white powder

doesn't regenerate Jeevan's and Lee's

severed digits, what did?

♪

William Shatner: An infant and an elderly man

both regenerate their fingers after horrific accidents,

using a mysterious powder.

How is this possible?

Can body parts really grow back

from just having the affected areas sprinkled...

in some mysterious, magical powder?

Apparently so,

and it turns out this powder

is not so magical after all.

It's made up of something called ECM --

extracellular matrix.

What's ECM?

I dunno!

Steve Badylak is a research professor

from the McGowan Institute

for regenerative medicine.

Extracellular matrix is the glue that holds

all of the cells in our body together.

All tissues, as most people know,

are made up of cells, different cell types --

skin cells, muscle cells, heart cells.

So, extra cellular matrix is what you might think of

as an instructive template

that all the cells in our--

in which all the cells of our body live.

We can make powder forms.

We can make sheet forms that look like sheets.

We can make gels out of it.

And these are important

for different therapeutic applications.

William Shatner: Extracellular matrix

is the scaffolding upon which

all tissue in the body is built.

This mix of protein and connective tissue

can signal the body to start the process

of re-growth, if applied to a wound.

Some scientists believe it may be possible

to use an extracellular matrix,

one day, to direct the process

of re-growing an entire digit or limb.

It changes the default mechanism of healing of the body.

It's something that, basically, Mother Nature's been working on

for hundreds of millions of years of R and D,

if you want to think of it that way.

William Shatner: So, where do scientists get their ECM from?

Here's a clue.

What is a cute, cuddly,

pink farm animal who has therapeutic

extracellular matrix to re-grow limbs?

Pigs, right?

But why pigs?

Steve Badylak: Pigs are a convenient

and abundant source of extracellular matrix.

The tissues from which they're made,

like skin, small intestine,

urinary bladder,

are throwaway products of the agricultural industry.

So, here's something.

Here's a tissue that would have been waste,

or maybe turned into fertilizer.

we're now using, as a medical device,

a regenerative medicine tool

for the reconstruction of tissue.

William Shatner: And because pigs are genetically similar to humans,

the proteins from the pig bladder

will trigger a response in us.

This is how they harvest it.

Scott Johnson: So, to prepare the extracellular matrix,

we start with the raw pig bladder,

and then, by using an acrylic scraper,

we simply spread the tissue,

loosen the muscle fibre.

Using forceps, then we grab that muscle

and literally pull and tear it away from the underlying matrix.

So, that's the outside layer,

referred to as the abluminal layer,

where the muscle is attached.

It then goes through

what is referred to as a peracetic acid wash.

At the end of that stage, the ECM is ready for use.

It can be freeze dried and used as a dry sheet.

That sheet, then, can either be used as is

or ground into a fine powder.

William Shatner: But not everyone is convinced that ECM

is the answer to the mystery.

Rocky Tuan is the director

of the Centre of Cellular and Molecular Engineering.

He believes there may be another explanation

why Lee Spievack and Jeevan's

fingertips grew back.

They may have a unique genetic predisposition.

The possibility of regenerating a finger is definitely there,

as shown by Lee's results.

He may very well have a genetic

or maybe even epi-genetic constitution

that allows him to respond in this manner.

William Shatner: Is it possible that people like

Jeevan and Lee are able to regenerate

and others can't?

Could we exploit their incredible abilities?

Before we find the answer,

far more research needs to be done.

Rocky Tuan: What we're trying to do is trying to figure out how,

in rare instances,

people are able to grow, what the mechanisms are,

and then, also,

in situations where they can't regenerate,

and then try to compare the two.

And by doing so,

we hope to identify

those factors or cells or genes

that are responsible for this process.

And that's how we can move forward.

William Shatner: One way this may be possible

is through stem cell research.

Found throughout growing embryos

but in only certain places in adults,

stem cells are unique because they can become

almost any type of tissue in the body,

while other cell types, like muscle or skin,

are fixed and unchangeable.

They're sort of like a wild card in a game of poker.

Now, if scientists can figure out

how to reprogram any cell into a stem cell,

through genetic manipulation,

then it may be possible to re-grow body parts

wherever there is damage.

If we can instruct the body

to re-grow a body part,

then, uh...

why wouldn't we do that?

I don't think there's any doubt that some day,

we will be able to control

the way cells act in the body.

In other words, we will be able

to instruct the growth

of new tissues and organs.

But what we would like to do is be able to re-grow your heart,

if you had a heart attack that destroys so much

of the heart muscle that you're going to die,

or to replace your kidney to get you off of dialysis,

or to re-grow your esophagus,

so that you don't have to go through

a life of misery,

after having it removed.

Instead, we will grow you a new esophagus.

This is not science fiction.

Uh, it would have been science fiction

30 or 40 years ago.

William Shatner: This may eventually lead

to the holy grail of all scientific discoveries --

eternal life.

The fountain of youth,

it has always been the holy grail.

We may change the life expectancy.

If you're able to better locomote

because you have better limbs and joints,

you'll be more fit, for example,

and maybe you'll eat better

and feel better and so on and so forth.

It'll probably affect your life expectancy.

William Shatner: Imagine a world where no one gets old.

What will our civilization look like in a hundred

or a thousand years?

Jeevan can say he had something to do with that.

Is that weird, or what?

What if I was to tell you that long ago,

in a time before time,

in a remote land at the far edges of the known world,

lived a race of tiny people

who lived in constant mortal fear

of huge, carnivorous dragons?

You might say, "Big deal Shatner!"

"Like we haven't seen Lord of the Rings!"

But what I'm talking about isn't an epic tale of fiction

set in Middle Earth.

What I'm talking about is a real race of Hobbits

that may once have existed

and fought real dragons, right here,

on our Earth.

Now, I dare you to tell me

that isn't weird, or what?

The remote island of Flores, in Southeast Asia,

has one of the most bizarre ecosystems in the world --

inhabited by elephants,

giant rats

and the deadly komodo dragon.

It is also the location of one of the most

unbelievable archeological discoveries of all time.

In 2001, a team of archeologists travelled to the island.

They began excavating

deep in a cave on the island of Flores

called Liang Bua.

Matt Tocheri: Researchers started excavating at Liang Bua,

this limestone cave on Flores, Indonesia.

And during the first two years of excavation,

they found some small bits of human bone,

but they weren't sure exactly what it was.

William Shatner: But then, in 2003,

they discovered more remains --

a complete skeleton of a female, roughly 30 years of age.

Carbon dating said she lived

around 18,000 years ago.

What confounded experts was that she was unlike

any other human being that's been ever known to have existed.

Matt Tocheri: In looking at, uh,

our species, it certainly does not fit in.

If it was a member of our species,

it would be very strange.

William Shatner: The reason is this.

Astonishing as it sounds,

it was only around 3' tall,

2½' shorter than a modern North American woman.

Robert Martin: It's a very small individual.

It was around three foot,

maybe a bit less than 3' in height.

William Shatner: This remarkable discovery

led this tiny, full-grown human specimen

to be nicknamed the Hobbit.

Was science fiction becoming science fact?

An undiscovered, human-like species,

only 3' tall,

sharing an island with komodo dragons

and giant rats.

Sounds too incredible?

The indigenous population of Flores

think they know what this species is --

the mythical Ebu Gogo --

a creature they believe once inhabited the island.

The Ebu Gogo are said to have been small,

hairy cave dwellers,

the same size as the hobbit.

These creatures are claimed to have survived

until as recently as the last century.

Is the presence of the hobbit's skeletons proof

that the legends were actually true?

♪

William Shatner: In 2003, archaeologists

make an astonishing discovery on an Indonesian island.

They find the complete skeleton of a human,

nearly 18,000 years old

and only 3' tall.

It's known as the hobbit.

But what happened to them?

Some theorize that the hobbit may have become extinct,

in part, because they were eaten

by the island's komodo dragon population.

Not nice.

But whatever their fate,

this extraordinary discovery confronted scientists

with an amazing possibility --

our human evolutionary history is incomplete,

and the hobbit is an entirely new species.

Briana Pobiner: Knowing that there was a totally different early human species,

living on earth, coexisting with us,

that looks so different than us

is something that was really mind-blowing

to the scientific community.

Well, I thought it was absolutely fantastic.

I think it adds a real level of diversity

to our family tree.

And seeing something that in some ways

looks so primitive that is so recent in time,

is really this great experiment

in being human.

Matt Tocheri: No matter what you thought it was,

it's just an incredible find.

I remember,

when it was first announced, you know, many, many scientists,

including myself, were very skeptical about it.

I mean, could this really be real?

But over time, you know,

the evidence has just been consistently presented

that shows us that, yeah,

this is a legitimate different species than our own.

William Shatner: Whilst the discovery

of the hobbit excited many,

others were less convinced.

I had a different viewpoint on this from the outset

because when I read that first paper about the skeleton,

it just didn't fit.

And so, I looked for an alternative explanation.

William Shatner: So, is the hobbit skull just a lone example,

or is there other evidence

that can prove it is a new species of human relative?

Is there anything else unique about the hobbit?

Well, it turns out

they do have one distinctive characteristic

that many experts say

is proof that it is

a separate species.

Matt Tocheri is a paleoanthropologist,

an expert who studies ancient peoples.

He has studied bones of the hobbit's wrist

and says that the unique structure is proof

that it is a new species.

The reasons why I think it's a different species

stem largely from my own research,

which happens to be on the evolution of the wrist in humans

and our close relatives, the great apes.

So, there's been some big changes to our wrists

in the last million years.

Well, Homo floresiensis doesn't show those changes,

and so, that basically says to me

that it must be descended from an ancestor prior to that,

a million years ago,

because it doesn't share the derived anatomy

we see in us and Neandertals.

William Shatner: He has found that a key bone in the hobbit's wrist

is more similar to that of a chimpanzee or ape

and not like a modern human's,

which means that it is, in fact,

a new and unknown species of human cousin.

Matt: In terms of the wrist evidence,

you can see that it's remarkably similar

to what we see in chimpanzees.

Now, that doesn't mean it's more closely related

to a chimpanzee,

because the hobbits share anatomy with modern humans

and Neandertals that chimpanzees don't.

But what the wrist shows to us is that it retains the anatomy

of the primitive hominin.

And so, it must have branched off prior to

this new morphology evolving,

and that's pretty amazing.

William Shatner: This compelling evidence

would be presented to the world's scientific community.

Since there were portions of other hobbit skeletons found,

they classified it as its own species,

with the Latin name Homo floresiensis.

But anthropologist Robert Martin

has a different theory

to explain the mystery of the hobbit.

Robert Martin: This skull is really

quite unusual.

The skeleton is quite unusual, and so you can understand

why people said it must be a new species.

It's a very unusual individual.

William Shatner: Robert Martin suggests the hobbit's inclusion

into our evolutionary history

was based on too little evidence.

Archeologists only recovered one skull

among the skeletal remains.

Robert Martin: And the point I really want to emphasize

is that we have fragments of other individuals,

but we only have one skull.

If they had found two or three

or four skulls that were all the same,

it would be much more difficult to argue.

We should be very, very careful about basing

huge interpretations on single specimens.

William Shatner: Dr. Martin agrees the skull isn't consistent

with our evolutionary history.

He believes its small size

raises a big problem.

The hobbit's skeleton is nearly 18,000 years old.

If what we know about human evolution is true,

the hobbit's brain should be larger than it is.

You have to go back three million years

to find a brain this small,

but over the last three million years,

the brain has got bigger in every other single hominid

except this one.

So, that's a problem.

If we look at all of the known hominid skulls

and plot out the brain size,

you get a very nice curve,

and the only thing that doesn't fit

is this hobbit from Flores.

William Shatner: So, he has an amazing theory of his own.

He suggests that the hobbit skeleton

actually belongs to a modern human from Flores,

who suffered from a congenital disease

known as microcephalia.

And microcephalic simply means "small head."

It is a developmental abnormality.

This is a cast of the skull of a modern human microcephalic,

a small-brained modern human,

and this brain is exactly the same size as in the hobbit.

William Shatner: Another convincing piece of evidence

is that this disease also has another side effect.

It produces a small body,

just like the hobbit.

Is it possible

that the world's scientific community is wrong?

♪

William Shatner: A tiny skeleton,

only 3' tall,

is found on an island in Indonesia --

nicknamed the hobbit.

Is this tiny creature a modern human,

simply shrunk by disease,

or is it a new species of human?

To add to the mystery,

completely new species of long-extinct human relatives

have started popping up all over.

Most recently, in a remote cave in Siberia,

where a tiny, preserved,

human-like finger bone was unearthed --

with DNA unrelated to any of our

so-far-discovered,

proto-human pals.

Dr. Briana Pobiner is an education specialist

from the Smithsonian Institute.

She believes the hobbit is just one of many

previously undiscovered species,

and more will likely be found.

Briana Pobiner: New fossils are being found all the time.

They often fit very well

into the early human family tree.

At least three other species of early humans

have shared the earth with our species,

Homo sapiens --

Homo erectus,

Homo Neandertalensis, or Neandertals,

and Homo floresiensis, the hobbit.

Potentially, this new species,

found in southern Siberia, this pinky bone,

could have even been a fourth species.

William Shatner: One of the ways they've been able to determine

this pinky bone belonged to a new species

was by examining its DNA.

Recent technological advances make it possible

to sequence the genes of long extinct species.

But mysteriously,

the hobbit's DNA has never been examined.

Why?

It turns out

the original DNA samples were damaged,

and, more bizarre,

since the first scientific paper was published,

no one has been granted access to the original skeleton.

Robert Martin The specimen has been kept

pretty much under wraps by the discoverers.

I requested access to CAT scans...

uh, CT scans,

to check this out, and I was refused access.

You're not allowed to publish if you don't make the material

accessible to other scientists.

William Shatner: Despite the protests, Homo floresiensis --

a.k.a. the hobbit --

is widely accepted as a new species.

Briana Pobiner: There's a lot about human evolution

that's still a mystery.

In a way, it's like putting together

the pieces of a puzzle.

In the last 10 or 15 years,

we've had an unprecedented amount of discoveries

that tell us that the human family tree

extends back about double the amount of time

that we initially thought,

that the number of human species on the family tree

is about double the number that we originally thought.

So, these finds, these new genetic finds,

the fossils, the archeological evidence,

really is filling out the human family tree,

shedding light on some of the darker mysteries

of human evolution.

William Shatner: So, hobbits might indeed exist,

but their true origins may remain a mystery forever.

Is that weird, or what?

So, there you have it --

three weird mysteries,

each with equally weird theories

to possibly explain them.

The U.S. military

investigates the power of mind over matter.

What did they find?

Can we control objects

or even kill,

just by using our minds,

or is psychokinesis just a trick of magic?

A young boy and an elderly man

both re-grow their fingers

after horrific accidents.

Can we regenerate limbs

simply by using powder extracted

from a pig bladder?

On an Indonesian island

inhabited by deadly komodo dragons,

archaeologists discover something extraordinary

that could rewrite the history of human evolution --

a tiny, 3' skeleton.

Is this a new species of human?

Do hobbits really exist?

You decide.

Join me next time for more stories that will

undoubtedly be...

weird, or What?