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A Belize archaeologist is suing the makers of a blockbuster ‘Indiana Jones’ film for using a likeness of a so-called Crystal Skull, which he says is a stolen national treasure. Dr. Jaime Awe claims the skull was stolen from Belize 88 years ago, and that filmmakers had no right to use a model of it in 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, according to the Hollywood Reporter. In a lawsuit filed in Illinois this week, Awe is demanding the return of the Crystal Skull, which he says is a national treasure, from a treasure-hunting family who...

IBADAN, Nigeria, - Police in Nigeria said a 75-year-old herbalist was arrested on allegations of possessing human skulls. Ibadan police said Ahmed Akekaka was arrested after investigators discovered two human skulls stored in a container at his home in Apete, a suburb of Ibadan, The Nation reported Friday. Investigators said Akekaka admitted the objects belonged to him, but he denied they were human skills. Police spokesman Daniel Oboyi said the skulls have been sent to a lab to confirm whether they came from humans.

A human skull found by two teenage Boy Scouts in a lake has sparked off a police investigation - who believe it may belong to a small child. Hollywood police say divers spent Monday morning searching Oak Lake Park, looking for bones and other evidence. Spokeswoman Lt Diana Pereira says that so far they haven't found anything after the two 15-year-olds found the skull over the weekend.

A mummified elongated skull found in Peru could finally prove the existence of aliens. The strangely shaped head - almost as big as its 50cm (20in) body - has baffled anthropologists. It was one of two sets of remains found in the city of Andahuaylillas in the southern province of Quispicanchi.

A murder mystery dating back to 1879 has been finally resolved aftera skull unearthed in BBC legend David Attenborough's garden was formally recognised as that of a woman murdered by her maid 132 years ago. Julia Martha Thomas, a wealthy widow aged 55, was killed by her 29-year-old housekeeper Kate Webster very close to Park Road in well-to-do Richmond, but her head was never found. The case became known as the 'Barnes Mystery', which gripped London at the time.

Thieves have tried to blackmail a Peruvian small-town mayor into withdrawing his re-election bid by claiming to have stolen his late father's skull, police say. The thieves dug up the body of Rogelio Vizcarra's father and then sent him a text message. Mr Vizcarra, mayor of San Cristobal in southern Peru, says the message sender offered to return the skull if he withdrew his bid for re-election. But he says he still plans to run. Police in the small town near Moquegua say the grave robbers unearthed the remains of Juan Vizcarra, who died in 1978, removing the skull and...

Why did a former Hennepin County pathologist keep the skull of a murder victim on whom he conducted an autopsy in 1978? No one knows. Dr. Kenneth Osterberg took the answer with him when he died in 2000. But the discovery of Ricky McGuire's skull in Osterberg's garage two years ago not only raised that question, it has now spawned a federal lawsuit, filed this week against the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, the Hennepin County Medical Center and the mortuary that buried the body. McGuire's family never knew they'd buried the 17-year-old without his head. No one ever told them....

MILFORD, Conn. (AP) -- A Colonial-era skull believed to belong to a Revolutionary War soldier is set to be reburied in Connecticut with full military honors. The unidentified skull was discovered in the 1840s when railroad tracks were being laid near where 46 soldiers died of smallpox. British troops had captured the soldiers in 1776 and abandoned them by what is now Milford Cemetery. Experts have determined the skull belonged to a man of European descent who was between 25 and 35 years old....

A skull long believed to be that of Adolf Hitler actually belonged to a woman, according to an American scientist who has taken DNA samples from it. The skull was taken by Soviet forces in 1945 when they found charred remains outside the Nazi dictator's bunker in Berlin. The Russians said at the time that the findings backed claims that Hitler had shot himself on April 30, 1945, and then been cremated along with his wife, Eva Braun. Now, however, archaeologist and bone specialist Nick Bellantoni says the skull really belonged to a woman aged under 40 and not Hitler...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- For decades it sat on a shelf in a brown cardboard box -- a skull pierced in the back with an apparent bullet hole and linked by a typewritten note to a dark and violent chapter in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Found in a pawnshop 27 years ago, the specimen is now in the hands of the Idaho state archaeologist. Ken Reid is supervising tests to determine whether the skull belongs to a victim of the Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857, when 120 men, women and children from...

Workers unearth unusual skull in North Dallas A plumber working on a construction project outside a North Dallas school unearthed a mysterious skull. “We all know it’s a primate,” said David Evans, 25, of Alvarado. “We just don’t know which kind.” The skull was buried about five feet underground, he said. It’s six inches from front to back and two inches wide. Most of the teeth, including one-inch canines, are intact. Evans said the skull was discovered last week at the St. Alcuin Montessori School near Churchill Way and Preston Road. A noted anthropologist for the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s...

Not long ago, the well-known collector Shlomo Moussaieff acquired two earthenware bowls, the open ends of which were adjoined to form a kind of case—inside the case was an ancient human skull. A magic incantation, written in Aramaic, was inscribed on the skull. BAR readers already know about the more than two thousand magic incantation bowls that have survived from third–seventh-century C.E. Jewish communities in Babylonia. The incantation bowls were made at the same time and in the very communities that produced the most intricate, complex and revered accomplishment of rabbinic Judaism, the Babylonian Talmud. Although some have deemed the...

This one-minute video shows skulls dating from the 4th century AD, excavated near Omsk, Siberia by Russian archeologists. They show a prominent deformation which they said was created by skull clamping or binding of newborns crania. Archeologists deem these too strange to be publicly displayed in the city museum. From the front the skulls look like that of a normal human, but when turned to the side it's clear that this is not the case. The skulls are grossly elongated. Scholars at the Omsk Museum of History and Culture have no conclusive answer as to the origins of these skulls,...

The heirs of an Apache chieftain whose remains are rumored to be held inside Yale's oldest secret society filed a lawsuit today demanding the return of their ancestor's skull. Twenty descendants of the legendary Apache chieftain Geronimo are suing the federal government, the University and the society Skull & Bones in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to seek the return of his remains as well as punitive damages. One hundred years ago today, Geronimo died of pneumonia at Fort Sill, Okla., but the suit alleges members of the society exhumed his remains in 1918 or 1919 and...

WASHINGTON — Some mysteries are such fun you almost don't want to know the truth. That may help explain why people are fascinated with crystal skulls. "People like to believe in something greater than themselves," Smithsonian anthropologist Jane MacLaren Walsh said, and crystal skulls are mysterious and beautiful.

Matthew Hodgson seemed perfect when he was born, but his parents knew there was a problem...Essentially, Matthew’s skull was growing into the shape of a football...

HOUSTON -- Police have charged three suspects accused of using the skull of a corpse buried in a Kingwood cemetery to make a bong. Kevin Wade Jones, 17, Matthew Richard Gonzalez, 17, and a 16-year-old boy were all charged with one count of desecrating a corpse. The suspects are accused of digging up the skull of an 11-year-old boy buried in a cemetery for African American war veterans and using it to smoke marijuana.

Incan skull surgery By Bruce BowerApril 25th, 2008 Holes in ancient skulls reflect skilled medical careHealing Hole in the HeadANCIENT SURGERY A new analysis of ancient skulls reveals skills of Incan healers in cranial cutting.Valerie AndrushkoWhen Incan healers scraped or cut a hunk of bone out of a person’s head, they meant business. Practitioners of this technique, known as trepanation, demonstrated great skill more than 500 years ago in treating warriors’ head wounds and possibly other medical problems, rarely causing infections or killing their patients, two anthropologists find. Trepanation emerged as a promising but dangerous medical procedure by about 1,000...

Skull returns to final rest place The skull is believed to be that of a woman in her 50s A rare 2,000-year-old Roman skull has been returned to the cave beneath the Yorkshire Dales where it was discovered by divers in 1996. Archaeologists were called in after cave divers unearthed human bones in what is believed to be one of the most important cave discoveries ever made. The skull dates to the 2nd Century and is that of a local woman in her 50s. It was stored at Sheffield University for carbon-dating and recently returned to the cave, which has...

Skull Changes Show Time of Human-Neandertal Split Scott Norris for National Geographic NewsMarch 17, 2008 Gradual changes in human skull size and shape suggest a split between humans and Neandertals (often spelled Neanderthals) about 300,000 to 400,000 years ago, according to a new study. The work provides the first estimate a divergence date for modern humans and Neandertals based on the rate of change of physical characteristics. Genetic Drift Just as DNA changes accumulate over time and provide a kind of "molecular clock" by which the separation of closely related species can be dated, evolved differences in physical form can...