Skeleton plundered from Mexican cave was one of the Americas’ oldest


Source: Nature



A human skeleton — probably one of the Americas' oldest — was stolen from the Chan Hol Cave in Mexico soon after it was discovered in 2012.
A human skeleton that was stolen from an underwater cave in Mexico in 2012 may be one of the oldest ever found in the Americas. Scientists have now put the age of the skeleton at more than 13,000 years old after analysing a shard of hip bone — left behind by the thieves because it was embedded in a stalagmite.

Cave divers discovered the remains in February 2012 in a submerged cave called Chan Hol near Tulúm on Mexico's Yucatán peninsula, and posted photos of a nearly complete skull and other whole bones to social media. The posts caught the attention of archaeologists Arturo González González at the Desert Museum in Saltillo, Mexico, and Jerónimo Avilés Olguín at the Institute of American Prehistory in Cancún.

By the time researchers visited the cave in late March, the remains were gone — except for about 150 bone fragments and a pelvic bone that had been subsumed by a stalagmite growing up from the cave floor. On the basis of these bones, the researchers think that the skeleton belonged to a young man who died when sea levels were much lower and the cave was above ground.



Cont’d.

LINK:
http://www.nature.com/news/skeleton-plundered-from-mexican-cave-was-one-of-the-americas-oldest-1.22521