Curious places in Belize
4 articles, each fact-checked and tied to a spot you can stand on.
A quartz skull allegedly found by a teenager in 1924, supposedly Maya but carved with modern rotary tools. It became a New Age symbol, but electron microscope analysis revealed wheel marks impossible before European contact. A 19th-century forgery.
A sinkhole in Florida where scientists study how caves form from below rather than above. Acidic water rising from deep aquifers dissolves the limestone from underneath, creating caves without any help from rainwater dripping down from the surface.
A circular abyss 300 meters wide and 125 meters deep in a coral reef. It formed as a limestone cave during the Ice Age when sea levels were lower. When the ice melted, the ceiling collapsed and the ocean flooded in, leaving stalactites hanging underwater in darkness.
The closest accessible land outcrop of debris blasted out when the dinosaur-killing asteroid struck 66 million years ago. The rocks here contain shocked quartz, tektites, and spherules that rained down in the hours after impact. You can literally hold pieces of the apocalypse in your hands.
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