If its possible to create your own instance and federate with any instance of your choice - are there any apps which include the ability to register your own instance with you as the sole user? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the underlying logic

Mr. Maussen is the same guy that found some mummies in Peru, claimed they were alien and it was proven to be mummified children. I wouldn't get too excited by this. If 30% of retrieved DNA was unidentifiable, then 70% was. Not an expert but unidentified genomes are likely to be a result of divergent evolution and/or simply a result of a chemical breakdown over time.

I'd put my money on this guy having a real knack for finding dead kids.

Evolution is crazy

I agree with this. There's some problems that need to be addressed. Hopefully sooner rather than later

Have you considered doing a top community of the week/month/year thing? You could reach out to community mods and alert them they've won "Top Community of X period based on ". Keep a pinned post detailing current "winners". It would help advertise this community, and it would encourage other communities to be more competitive/pro-active in appealing to new users.