Human skull found on Indiana riverbank is over 4,000 years old, coroner says

(CBS News) — Human remains from ancient times were discovered several months ago along a riverbank in rural Indiana, officials announced this week.

Scientific analyses, including carbon dating, confirmed that the finding on the bank of Fayette County’s Whitewater River was once a portion of a human skull, the Fayette County Coroner’s Office said in a social media post Monday. The tests also traced the origin of the remains back to around 2300 BCE — 4,270 years ago, according to the post.

The coroner’s office said the remains were initially spotted in June and reported to the Fayette County sheriff. Eddie Richardson, the coroner, thanked a “landowner” for filing the report but didn’t share the owner’s identity or details about how the person uncovered the skull.

“This discovery underscores the importance of our community’s vigilance and the necessity of professional collaboration,” said Eddie Richardson, the county coroner, in a statement. “I want to commend the landowner for their responsible action in immediately reporting the finding.”

Specialists from the University of Georgia and the Human Identification Center at the University of Indianapolis, which aims to “provide expert forensic anthropology consulting services,” according to its website, helped confirm the age of the remains, the coroner’s office said.

The office announced the discovery on Indigenous Peoples’ Day and called it “a powerful and humbling reminder that people have walked this land, our home in Fayette County, for millennia.”

“It calls upon all of us to handle this matter with the utmost respect and diligence,” the office said in its social post.

The office is waiting to receive guidance from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources on next steps to take to ensure “that this ancestral discovery is handled according to cultural and legal standards,” according to the post.