I am well aware of what the article said, and the part you bolded is not bold in the original. Your bolding of the part you agree with is very disingenuous. You could've just as easily bolded this part, describing the find from the SECOND tomb: "The bones were found where Kaas had stored them and when testing revealed that they did indeed belong to a man in his sixties, Paul VI officially announced, on June 26th 1968, that the relics of St. Peter had been discovered."
Since the author is a scholar and not a Christian apologist, he is obliged to point out all sides of the argument. The bones may not be the bones of St. Peter, but they very well could be. The Basilica is built on the site of Emperor Nero's Circus, where Peter was crucified (head down). The church built there, on the site of his death, has been there from the earliest beginnings of Christianity. Constantine built the Basilica over the little church in the 300s.
As Dr. Hijmans says in his last paragraph: "is it not enough that under the high altar of St. Peter's we have identified the remains of a monument marking a tomb that has drawn Christian worshippers continuously for over 1850 years? It is in that, one would think, that the true importance of this monument lies."
Peter was Jewish and the Jews had their own cemeteries.But Simon Magus was probably buried up there ----