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Experts have confirmed that dozens of gold coins scattered across the ocean floor off the coast of Colombia belonged to the San José, an ill-fated Spanish treasure galleon that sank over 300 years ago during a battle with British warships. The findings were published on June 10 in the journal Antiquity.

The 64-gun, three-masted Spanish flagship alone carried as much as 200 tons of treasure with a modern value estimated as high as $17 billion by today’s standards.

The key pieces of evidence were dozens of rough gold coins sitting on the ocean floor. The treasure had an average diameter of 1.3 inches and each weighed around one ounce.

“Hand-struck, irregularly shaped coins—known as cobs in English and macuquinas in Spanish—served as the primary currency in the Americas for more than two centuries,” Daniela Vargas Ariza, a maritime archeologist and the study’s lead author said in a statement.

Source – Popular Science