Key Marco Cat

Meet the Key Marco Cat, the world-famous cat statuette estimated to have been made between 500 and 1,500 years ago

Discovered by anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing in an 1896 Key Marco excavation, the wooden figure stayed preserved because it was buried in an oxygen-free layer of muck. While many other artifacts immediately began to disintegrate upon exposure to air, the Key Marco Cat survived with surprising detail.

“Perishable artifacts, like the Key Marco Cat, are rare in the archaeo