Human remains including parts of a skull and leg bones have been found during an archaeological dig at an Iron Age site in Caithness.
The police and procurator fiscal service have been notified of the finds at Thrumster, near Wick, as normal procedure by archaeologists.
The remains have still to be radiocarbon dated to determine how old they are.
Ancient human remains have previously been uncovered in Caithness.
AOC Archaeology and Yarrows Heritage Trust have been leading teams of 12 to 15 volunteers on the dig.
Dr Andy Heald, of AOC Archaeology, said they had established the site held the ruins of a broch, a massive stone wall Iron Age roundhouse.
He said the bones found could be those of a man. Read more.
Packing what may be the world’s biggest bite, a recently revealed “sea monster” would have given Jaws a run for its money.
Put on display July 8 at the U.K.’s Dorset County Museum, the 7.9-foot-long (2.4 meter-long) skull (pictured) belonged to a pliosaur, a type of plesiosaur that had a short neck, a huge, crocodile-like head, and razor-sharp teeth. When alive about 155 million years ago, the seagoing creature would have had a strong enough bite to snap a car in half, according to the museum.
Amateur collector Kevan Sheehan found the skull in pieces between 2003 and 2008 at the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site, a 95-mile (152-kilometer) stretch of fossil-rich coastline in England. The Dorset County Council’s museums service purchased the fossil, and later research by University of Southampton scientists suggests that it’s the largest complete pliosaur skull ever found. Read more.
A construction worker at the new science center at University of San Francisco got quite a shock this past week when a skull came tumbling out of the shovel of the backhoe he was operating.
It turns out he had uncovered an old Masonic cemetery with more than two dozen caskets.
By Friday, the site was littered with plastic tarps and orange flags where all the caskets were found. It’s possible, however, that there isn’t much there besides the caskets.
When archaeologists pried open the lids of a couple of the coffins, they found almost no remains. So far, all they’ve recovered from the site are one complete skull, a partial skull and a few bone fragments. Read more.
The 32,000-year-old human remains reveal incriminating cut marks.
Early humans wore jewelry and likely practiced cannibalism, suggest remains of the earliest known Homo sapiens from southeastern Europe.
The remains, described in PLoS One, date to 32,000 years ago and represent the oldest direct evidence for anatomically modern humans in a well-documented context. The human remains are also the oldest known for our species in Europe to show post-mortem cut marks.
“Our observations indicate a post-mortem treatment of human corpses including the selection of the skull,” co-author Stephane Pean, a paleozoologist and archaeologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, told Discovery News. “We demonstrate that this treatment was not for nutritional purposes, according to comparison with game butchery treatment, so it is not a dietary cannibalism.”
Instead, Pean said that he and his colleagues believe that the “observed treatment of the human body, together with the presence of body ornaments, indicates rather a mortuary ritual: either a ritual cannibalism or a specific mortuary practice for secondary disposal.” Read more.
The Barton County Sheriff’s Office says a partial human skull found in December is that of an American Indian male who probably died before 1900. The Great Bend Tribune reports a forensic anthropologist in Manhattan determined the remains were those of a man 35 to 45 years old, if not older.
Undersheriff Larry Holliday says the report didn’t pinpoint the period in which the man lived, but there was no modern dental work. The skull was found December 26 by duck hunters. It was missing the lower jaw and had only three teeth in the upper jaw. The Sheriff’s Office says the skull will be sent to the Kansas State Historical Society’s Unmarked Burial Sites Board. (source)
TEN SLEEP, Wyo. — Some kids playing on a hill in Washakie County found human bones that authorities believe to be about 100 to 150 years old.
Sheriff’s Deputy Val Martin says the children found what they thought was a dinosaur egg earlier this month and took it to their parents.
Turns out it was a piece of a human skull.
The Northern Wyoming Daily News reports that a subsequent investigation of the site found other human bones.
The bones have been sent to Laramie for University of Wyoming archaeology experts to inspect and try to identify. (source)
SOUTH PASADENA - While digging a hole intended for some shrubbery, a gardener’s shovel struck a centuries- old relic, unearthing what authorities said Thursday they believe is a Native American skull.
The skull, discovered May 25, likely belongs to a member of the Gabrielino/Tongva tribe that occupied the area before the arrival of Europeans, officials said. Finding bodies and artifacts belonging to American Indians in Southern California is more common than most would believe, officials said. The state Native American Heritage Council is notified of up to four bodies a month in Los Angeles County. “It’s not surprising because it is common, but I think most people are surprised by the amount of history,” said Los Angeles County coroner’s Capt. John Kades. “You see streets, parking lots and skyscrapers, but you dig down anywhere there’s history.” Read more.
The discovery of a human skull and bones of Prehistoric mega fauna – among them a gomphothere – in a flooded cave in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, has set in motion a multi-disciplinary research project.
The team including cave divers, archaeologists and other specialists, will continue to explore the site in order to further study the remains which could be more than 10,000 years old.
Underwater archaeologist Pilar Luna Erreguerena of the National Institute of Anthropology and History said that after the ancient remains were discovered by three experienced cave divers, a project was formulated for the site known as Hoyo Negro (Black Hole), part of the Aktun-Ha flooded caves system in Quintana Roo. “This may be a very ancient site, so we need to protect it. The materials look to be in a good state of preservation. Besides the skull, we found a large bone that might be a humerus”.
The three cave divers – as part of an initial project started four years ago – swam through a 1200 metre long tunnel up to the entrance of a pool known as Hoyo Negro before descending 60 metres. It was then that they detected a human skull and long bone, extinct mega fauna and bonfire ash. Read more.
