Ten Astounding Discoveries Involving Skeletons

The world of nature is a fascinating place with many secrets and mysteries to be discovered. After all this time, it’s humbling to think just how much there is that scientists are still finding out today. The skeleton is a seemingly endless treasure trove of information. Ancient human remains offer us a glimpse into the customs of the past. Animal bones enhance our understanding of biology.

But exploring dead remains can sometimes lead us down dark, macabre paths. Archeologists uncover evidence of human sacrifice. Kush addicts digging up graves to secure a fix. Here are ten of the most interesting, and sometimes unsettling, recent discoveries that involve skeletons.

Related: 10 Amazingly Decorated Human Remains

10 Whale Skeleton Leaking Oil Decades after Its Death

Visitors to the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts should be on alert. One of their exhibits, a 66-foot (20-meter) blue whale skeleton, is still dripping oil 26 years after the creature died. In fact, the museum has had to engineer a system to stop the oil seeping out onto the floor. Any secretions from the skeleton are captured and moved into a funnel, which allows curators to keep an eye on how much ooze is coming out.

The leaking marine mammal goes by the name of KOBO—King of the Blue Ocean. Its carcass showed up on the bow of a tanker in 1998 after it was hit by a propeller and killed. Scientists stripped away the flesh and cleaned the bones in New Bedford harbor. But even after the five-month cleaning process, some of the oil remained and is still oozing out to this day.

Whale oil is a valuable commodity. It exists in the bone marrow to help the whales stay buoyant, as well as an emergency energy source. But for centuries, people have used the substance to create all kinds of products, including soaps, margarines, lubricants, and even explosives.

So far, KOBO has secreted over a liter of oil. The blue ocean king shows no sign of stopping any time soon. Experts at the New Bedford Whaling Museum expect KOBO to carry on dripping until 2060.^[1]

9 Criminals in West Africa Digging Up Graves for Drug Abuse

Some people are willing to do almost anything if it helps them get high. Digging up skeletons is no exception. Over the past few years, kush has hit the headlines—the new mix of psychoactive substances wreaking havoc in West Africa. In Sierra Leone, reports say that hundreds of young men are dying every few months from organ failure. The country’s only psychiatric hospital says that from 2020 to 2023, kush-related admissions have risen 4,000% to 1,865.

But the drug is notorious for containing ground-up human bones. The crisis has become so severe that cemeteries are increasing their security to stop users from digging up skeletons. In Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, police have been called in to fend off gravediggers.^[2]

8 Tomb of Chinese Emperor Contains Panda Skeleton

Scientists set out to explore the Mausoleum of Emperor Wen with much anticipation. Who knew what they might find? But none of the team was expecting to uncover the complete skeleton of a giant panda. Scientists believe the emperor was buried with the bear as a symbol of wealth and power.

Researchers from the Institute of Archeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences discovered the remains of the remarkable creature. They found it at a site a few kilometers outside Xi’an in Central China. The city of Xi’an holds immense historical significance. It was the capital of the Western Han dynasty, which Emperor Wen ruled from 180 to 157 BC. But it was also the starting point for the ancient Silk Road trade network.

Emperor Wen was a successful ruler who brought peace and prosperity to the region. Archeologists dug up over 1,500 artifacts around his burial site. Among these were bronze chariots, pottery figurines, and horses. But the most extravagant of all was the full-size giant panda. Interestingly, in the 1970s, researchers found a panda skull outside the tomb of Wen’s mother, Empress Dowager Bo.^[3]

7 Thousand-Year-Old Skeletons Discovered with Buckets on Feet

Humans of the past practiced all kinds of strange rituals, many of which we’re only just discovering. Archeologists in Ukraine unearthed over a hundred skeletons with some surprising adornments. The remains had buckets on their feet and rings around their necks.

The team excavated a pagan-era cemetery close to Kyiv. They discovered a mix of male and female skeletons, but only the women wore elaborate neckpieces. Wooden buckets were found at the feet of some of the males. Researchers say these may have been used in funeral ceremonies.

This newly uncovered mass grave offers scientists a deeper look at the traditions of the past. Around the time these people died, Ukraine was starting to embrace Christianity. Volodymyr the Great, who ruled over that area during that period, shifted away from paganism around AD 987.^[4]

6 Austrian Man Finds Three Mammoth Skeletons in his Cellar

Andreas Pernerstorfer was getting on with renovating his wine cellar when, incredibly, he came across the remains of a Stone Age mammoth. At first, he thought his discovery was just a piece of wood. But it turned out to be part of the bone structure of an extinct creature dating back 30,000 to 40,000 years.

Scientists from the Austrian Academy of Sciences were invited to excavate the cellar. To date, they have uncovered three separate mammoth skeletons. They believe the mammoths, early relatives of modern elephants, could have been chased and killed by hunters. Researchers say this is the most significant archeological discovery in Austria for over a century. The team hopes that further investigation will help improve their understanding of ancient human hunting practices.^[5]

5 Iron Age Remains of Human Sacrifice in Britain

In 2010, scientists in the English county of Dorset found rare evidence of a human blood sacrifice dating back thousands of years. They discovered the bones of an Iron Age woman, thought to have died in her late 20s, and were shocked at the brutality inflicted upon her. She suffered a fractured rib and a slash to the neck and was buried in an unusual style.

“In the other burials we have found, the deceased people appear to have been carefully positioned in the pit and treated with respect,” explained forensic anthropologist Martin Smith, “But this poor woman hasn’t.” Instead, she was found face down on top of an arrangement of animal bones. The unusual burial and injuries suggest the young woman met her grisly demise as the victim of ritual murder. Many experts believe that Iron Age Brits carried out human sacrifices but have found little evidence. This macabre discovery gives scientists an insight into the dark customs of the past.^[6]

4 Possible Human Remains Turn Out to be a Toy Skeleton

Something a bit more whimsical now after the dark rituals of some of the previous items. In 2023, a concerned member of the public contacted the police after finding what looked like human bones in a bush in their garden. The incident took place in Derbyshire, Britain.

But when an officer arrived to investigate, they found the top half of a toy pirate skeleton with an arm missing. The deceased buccaneer even had a little pet parrot. Long Eaton Police shared a photo of the toy on social media, telling people it’s “always better to be safe than sorry” when reporting suspicious incidents.^[7]

3 Preserved Remains of a Mastodon Dug Up in Iowa

Archeologists in Iowa have been hard at work bringing the skeleton of a mighty mastodon to the surface. Wayne County locals stumbled across a bone poking out of the ground in the fall of 2022. So they contacted experts at the University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist (OSA), who identified the bone as a mastodon femur. It wasn’t until August 2024 that the team returned to the site and began excavating the remains of the extinct mammoth.

Radiocarbon dating has revealed the creature lived some 13,600 years ago. Mastodons were huge, elephant-like beasts that roamed North America for millions of years before being wiped out by the last Ice Age. Despite its age, the skeleton is in excellent condition. After studying the mastodon, the OSA team plans to display it at the nearby Prairie Trails Museum.^[8]

2 Oldest Known Evidence of Surgical Amputation Was 31,000 Years

The oldest known incident of surgical amputation took place some 31,000 years ago in Borneo, Indonesia. How do we know this? In 2020, archeologists excavated a skeleton from a limestone cave in the East Kalimantan region. They found the left foot had been cleanly removed and then healed to form a stump. Evidence suggests the person lived six to nine years after the procedure.

Scientists used to believe that amputation was developed by agricultural societies around 10,000 years ago. But this finding blows that idea out of the water. Whoever removed the foot would have needed impressive technical skill and a strong insight into human anatomy. Also, the community must have provided sufficient care and hygiene for the patient to survive.

The amputated remains challenge previously held ideas about the limited abilities of hunter-gatherers. “It was a huge surprise that this ancient forager survived a very serious and life-threatening childhood operation, that the wound healed to form a stump, and that they then lived for years in mountainous terrain with altered mobility – suggesting a high degree of community care,” bioarchaeologist Melandri Vlok told reporters.^[9]

1 DNA Analysis Helps Solve Mystery of Russian Corpse

Let’s head back to England for this final entry, where scientists were left scratching their heads over an unexpected skeleton. The 2,000-year-old remains of a man born in modern-day southern Russia somehow wound up in rural Britain. For a while, no one could explain how it happened. It took some expert DNA detective work to track the man’s journey from Eastern Europe.

DNA testing on a dead person is much more complicated than with a live one. Thousands of years in a ditch in the countryside had left the genetic material broken and damaged. A team from the Francis Crick Institute in London had to extract and decode DNA from a small bone in his inner ear. Their tests showed that the man had been Sarmatian, a nomadic Iranian-speaking group that settled in southern Russia. Experts place his death between AD 126 and 228. At this point in history, Britain was occupied by the Roman Empire.

Researchers from Durham University then examined his teeth to learn more about his diet. They found that as a boy, the deceased ate cereal grains that grew in Sarmatian regions. But as he got older, he began to eat fewer grains and more Western European wheat. From this, the team concluded that he had migrated. The young man traveled from the periphery of the Roman Empire across the continent to England, possibly as a cavalryman’s son or a slave.

As excavator Dr Alex Smith told reporters, “The availability of these DNA and chemical analysis techniques means that we can now ask different questions and look at how societies formed, their make-up, and how they evolved in the Roman period. It suggests that there was much greater movement, not just in the cities but also the countryside.”^[10]