Restoration reveals human remains in famous Carnegie diorama

Donald Gilliland | Thursday, Jan. 26, 2017, 10:24 a.m.

“Arab Courier Attacked by Lions,” among the oldest and most storied pieces of taxidermy on Earth, will return to public display Saturday at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History with a new name, a new location and new secrets revealed — including the fact it contains human remains.

“It's an amazing piece,” said Gretchen Anderson, conservator for the museum.

For nine months, Anderson and her team have been restoring the dramatic diorama - one of the very few to feature a human figure, which is riding a dromedary camel being attacked by what are believed to be Barbary lions, a species now extinct.

“We've talked to hundreds of people. Everybody remembers it. Everybody talks about it. Kids love it,” Anderson said. “This is very iconic of this place.”

The diorama was first displayed 150 years ago at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867, where it created a sensation and won a gold medal. Two years later, it was sold to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where it was equally popular. It traveled to Philadelphia to be a featured exhibit in the Centennial Exposition of 1876, but was subsequently boxed and put into storage in New York until Andrew Carnegie purchased it in 1899 for his new museum in Pittsburgh, where it has remained on display ever since.

“For the first 30 years of its life, it was not under glass,” Anderson noted, and although it has been under glass since it arrived in Pittsburgh, the glass was not air tight.

Anderson and her team carefully removed the accumulated grime from mid-19th Century Paris, New York - “not known to be the cleanest city on Earth” - and the notorious air pollution of industrial Pittsburgh.

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Skull pushes back clock on early human migration

An ancient skull discovered in a cave in Laos has pushed back the clock on human migration to Southeast Asia by as much as 20,000 years, a study has found.

The skull discovered in the Annamite Mountains in northern Laos is the oldest modern human fossil found in Southeast Asia and is believed to be between 46,000 and 63,000 years old.

The find also reveals that early humans did not simply follow the Asian coast as they migrated from Africa to Australia, as some researchers have argued, but that some also moved inland into unfamiliar terrain.

"This fossil find indicates that the migration out of Africa and into East and Southeast Asia occurred at a relatively rapid rate, and that, once there, modern humans weren't limited to environments that they had previously experienced," said co-author Laura Shackelford, an anthropologist with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

While some human remains of about that age have been found in China and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, none have shown definitively modern human features or been as well dated as the Laos skull.

The discovery also reinforces genetic studies which indicate modern humans were living in the region at least 60,000 years ago.

"Given its age, fossils in this vicinity could be direct ancestors of the first migrants to Australia," Shackelford said in a press release.

"But it is also likely that mainland Southeast Asia was a crossroads leading to multiple migratory paths."

Continued:  http://uk.news.yahoo.com/skull-pushes-back-clock-early-human-migration-190225614.html

‘Skull’ in Burnley river drama was elaborate hoax

A SUSPECTED human skull found in a river by a Hapton couple out walking their dogs in May was an elaborate hoax.

Police said forensic experts initially thought the skull belonged to a man but when they tried to subject it to carbon dating, they realised it was a fake.

Further chemical tests confirmed that it was an elaborate replica of a skull belonging to an Aboriginal man.

The fake skull even had a fracture which had healed, incision marks suggesting a pre-death operation and signs of a significant infection around the nose and mouth.

It was initially handed to police by Mr and Mrs Mick and Elaine Bell, of Valley Gardens, who had been walking their dogs near to a shallow section of water which flows through Spa Wood, between Burnley Cemetery and Hapton Colliery.

Det. Sgt Charlie Haynes, of Burnley CID, said that it had been cast from an original skull. “A visual examination of photographs by the anthropologist indicated that the skull was that of a human male,” he said.

“Given the close proximity to the colliery and the cemetery this was not surprising, and a number of theories emerged including the possibility that the skull had been washed away from the rear of the cemetery by the recent heavy rain, or had been washed out of the colliery having been the remains of a miner who had died there prior to the 1962 disaster.

“The skull became more fascinating when scientists told me that they were struggling to date the item through the carbon dating process and suggested that the skull may be fossilised.

“Also the pathology on the skull included a fracture which had healed, incision marks indicating a pre-death operation and also signs of a significant infection around the nose and mouth.

“Finally, the features of the skull were those of an Australoid, i.e. Australian Aboriginal or from one of the South Pacific Islands such as Papua New Guinea.

“When carbon dating failed to produce any results the item was subjected to chemical testing, revealing only then that the skull was neither bone nor fossil and, in fact, an elaborate fake, having been cast from a real skull.

“It will remain a mystery as to how and why this actually ended up in the river that runs through Spa Wood. I would invite anybody with any information that may help me answer this to contact me.

“I would like to thank members of Burnley and District Historical Society for their help with researching the area prior to the skull being exposed as a fake.”

Anyone with information about how the replica skull came to be in the water is asked to call Det. Sgt Haynes on 01282 472240.


http://www.burnleyexpress.net/news/strange-but-true/skull-in-burnley-river-drama-was-elaborate-hoax-1-4717527