Roswell Gift Shop Declared Archaeological Site After Artifacts Found in Storage

A routine inventory of the Aliens R Us gift shop in Roswell, New Mexico has yielded objects that predate not only the store's founding but the entire Cretaceous period, prompting the International Xenoarchaeology Council to designate the shop's back storage room as a protected archaeological site. The discovery began when store owner Darlene Hooks asked her nephew to organize the back room, which had accumulated fifty years of unsold inventory. Among the snow globes, refrigerator magnets, and 'I Got Probed in Roswell' t-shirts, the nephew found a box labeled 'MISC. - DO NOT THROW OUT' containing seven objects that defied identification. 'I thought they were novelty items from a supplier that went out of business,' Hooks said. 'One of them hums. I used it as a paperweight for thirty years.' The humming object, now designated RS-001, has been analyzed by a team from Los Alamos National Laboratory. Its composition includes elements not found on the periodic table, its internal structure suggests manufacturing processes unknown to human engineering, and it is warm to the touch despite having no detectable energy source. 'It's either the most significant xenoarchaeological find in history or the most elaborate novelty item ever produced in Shenzhen,' said Dr. Ricardo Mendez, the lead analyst. The shop has been cordoned off, and Hooks has been relocated to a temporary retail space across the street, where she continues to sell alien-themed merchandise. Business has increased 4,000% since the discovery. 'I always told people the aliens were real,' Hooks said. 'They just assumed I was doing a bit. I was not doing a bit.' The six remaining objects are being analyzed. Early results suggest they include a navigation device, a container of unknown liquid, and what appears to be a lunch box containing a 65-million-year-old sandwich.