New Mexico city approves excavation to reclaim buried Atari E.T. cartridges

Forget dinosaurs or the missing link — the most important archaeological dig in the world is the one to rescue countless discarded Atari items from the early 1980s.

The Alamogordo, N.M. city commission just approved excavation of a garbage dump that allegedly holds the remains of millions of games for the Atari 2600, according to KRQE television. Specifically, the dump is the resting place for the unsold copies of the movie-licensed title E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.