Ancient Human Remains Retrieved From Burned Museum

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL—Science Magazine reports that one of the oldest-known sets of human remains in the Americas has been recovered from the aftermath of the fire at Brazil’s 200-year-old National Museum by scientists accompanied by construction teams, who are reinforcing the structure’s outer walls, and federal police officers, who are investigating the cause of the fire. The 11,500-year-old skull fragments and a piece of femur, from an individual researchers call Luzia, had been kept in a metal case in a metal cabinet on the museum’s ground floor, away from the rest of the museum’s anthropology collections. Archaeologist Claudia Carvalho said the damage to the skull was “less than expected,” in that the glue holding it together had melted, and some of the pieces had broken. To read in-depth about the search for evidence of the first Americans, go to “America, in the Beginning.”