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 archaeological record,” remarked Torben Rick, Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. “Its significance lies in the information it holds about the human past, cultural diversity, and the ways that these issues can inspire researchers and the general public.”

The Key Marco Cat – a half-human, half-panther figure thought to have religious significance – is the most famous of the Pepper-Hearst artifacts. Carved in native buttonwood