Smithsonian seems to be a little crooked in covering up things they don’t want out there for whatever reason.
Smithsonian Science, like many insufficient religious belief systems (there, fixed it), seems to be a little crooked in covering up things they don't want out there for whatever reason.
My grandfather discovered a very large stone axe while helping dig holes for footers for an air raid watcher tower in Southern Maryland during WWII. He loaned the artifact to the Smithsonian for study. When he asked about it they claimed it had been ‘misplaced’. It hasn’t been seen since.
The Smithsonian had a jackass named Alex Hrdlicka running it back in the first half of the 20th century (anyone reading this wanting to nitpick my not looking up exact dates or the exact name of the organization at that time get a preemptive GFY), during which period the Smithsonian loaded onto a barge a bunch of holdings that didn't fit the narrative, and dumped it into the Atlantic. Despite his treatment of precolumbian (and some post-columbian) human remains, he's been held up as some kind of hero for rejecting a priori any PreColumbian contact or transoceanic influence on North America.