When archeologists received a phone call about what turned out to be the largest Roman hoard to have been discovered in a Spanish cave, the caller was a local man, but the culprit was no other than a badger.
Archeologist Alfonso Fanjul Peraza and colleagues uncovered 209 coins from the Late Roman period (200-400 AD) which could have possibly been hidden by Romans fleeing from barbarians. Of these coins, the badger had dug out nearly half. The coins were found lying around the hole leading to the badger's nest in the La Cuesta cave in the Asturias region of northwest Spain.
For the badger, it might have been a mundane week of nest-building and food-hunting, but for humanity, it may help expand our knowledge on the eventual fall of the Roman Empire.
Images: Alfonso Fanjul Peraza