5 bizarre things people discovered while exploring Google Earth

For more than 20 years, William Moldt's disappearance haunted the people who loved him. Then someone looking up their old home on Google Earth noticed a white sedan just under the surface of a nearby pond.

It is the first of five strange finds BGR has rounded up from Google Maps and Google Earth.

Google Earth and a cold case missing person

Moldt vanished in late 1997 after a night out with friends. Police had little to go on, and the case went cold. The person who found the car was only browsing for old memories. The vehicle turned out to hold Moldt's remains, and it had been visible since at least 2007.

New hominid species found using Google Earth

In late 2007, paleoanthropologist Lee R. Berger was using Google Earth to map possible caves at the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa. He believed distortions in the shadows marked unexplored caves. A year later, his young son ran back holding bones. They belonged to a new hominid species, Australopithecus sediba, estimated to have lived two million years ago.

Satellite Calibration Lines in the Gobi Desert

There are almost 16,000 satellites circling our planet, and they too have to be calibrated as well as a regular camera. The strange lines seen in the Gobi Desert in China are reportedly used to calibrate China’s spy satellites. Other nations too use similar patterns, and satellite cameras tracking natural calamities and climate change also use them for calibration.

The Badlands guardian and other strange formations

The Badlands Guardian was discovered in Canada by Lynn Hickox in 2006 just days after downloading Google Earth. The formation took thousands of years of erosion to form, and pareidolia completes the trick, allowing the human mind to perceive a face. The formation is also known as "Indian Head".

An ancient Roman villa found online

Luca Mori, an Italian software developer, explored his country using Google Earth, which had just been launched, when he discovered that there was an ancient river. Around the river were rectangles that could be shadows as well as a courtyard. He contacted the archaeologists in the National Archaeological Museum, who validated his discovery.