Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Sandra Yi Reporting The discovery of a human skull in Park City has state archaeologists trying to find out more about it.
It's common for excavators to dig up interesting things, but one discovery really took them by surprise. Yesterday afternoon Bob Young found a skull buried in an area where new homes are going up, near the Park City Mountain Resort.
Young hit it with a backhoe and dug up the remains. He and some others tried to piece it together, then he called his boss and police. A construction worker, working on a different project across the street, took these pictures.
Bob Young, Found Skull: "It was a little ball. It was like this big and you could just see the little zigzag lines the growth plates on the back of the head."
Ron Rood, Asst. State Archaeologist: "The whole area's been disturbed, there's a lot of fill, historic debris and stuff from probably the 1880s, and everything's mixed up down there. And it could very well be that this was some human remains that got pushed out of another grave somewhere else and just sort of, unfortunately, kind of moved into this area."
State archaeologists were back at the site today trying to see if there were other remains, but didn't find any, which supports the theory that the skull was moved from its original grave.
A forensic anthropologist is examining the skull. She believes it's likely that of a Native American man, but it's unclear how old it is. If the skull is that of a Native American, the state will try to identify the tribe so plans can be made to rebury it.
Meantime, construction continues at the site.
