As backwoods boys from Minnesota and Indiana, James Murrell and Ken Nystrom are starting to feel like local celebrities.
"It's overwhelming," Murrell said. "I had no idea this show would have that kind of impact."
The two had never met before they found out they would be featured on the Discovery Channel series, "Mummy Autopsy," which airs tonight at 7 p.m.
The show has been touted as a mix of C.S.I. and Indiana Jones.
UNM graduate students Murrell and Nystrom were sent across continents as part of a five-member mummy investigating team.
They examined scars, bones, burns, clothing, hair, body stature and tooth decay to find mummies' ages, height and cause of death.
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"We always get some kind of answers, but not always necessarily to our satisfaction as scientists," Nystrom said.
He said they always qualify what they say as speculation, because it's hard to say for sure there is solid evidence for the answers they find.
"Discovery is always looking for the hard-core statement of truth," Nystrom said.
The students saw their first episodes Monday night in the Southwest Film Center in a world premiere.
"It's good insight into what we're doing in the other shows," Murrell said.
Murrell's longest day of filming was five days - Nystrom's was six.
Although it was a lot of pressure to try and solve mysteries in three days, it was a blast, they said.
Nystrom ran into some problems, though, while attempting to extract from a cave in Peru a mummy which turned out to be the oldest found in that part of the world. The mummy, called Abuelita, was worshipped by the local community. They believed they could get sick if Abuelita left the cave. Nystrom was able to convince the locals to allow the investigators to take Abuelita, provided they bring her back in one week.
"The local politicians - it is a nightmare sometimes," he said.
The show's producers contacted UNM anthropology professor Jane Buikstra, who recommended Nystrom for the show.
The 13 hour-long episodes are broken up into half-hour segments.
Some mummies were naturally preserved. Others had to be put together like a jigsaw puzzle.
In one episode, Murrell pieces together four skeletons. The questions: Are they part of the same family, how were they killed, and how did they end up in a pit together?
An anthropologist was able to do facial reconstructions and said it was possible the skeletons were a family. Murrell and his partner said plague could have been a possibility for death. Otherwise, it looked like a murder hunt, he said.
Murrell has previously performed X-rays on Andean mummies in South America. Nystrom started working with mummies as an undergraduate student 13 years ago.
Nystrom said they are looking for another season of autopsies.
"If ratings are really good, we will probably get commissioned for another series," Murrell said.
