With a human skull in the garden?

[Slippersandacuppa]

Because I've never been in this situation before.

We've been tidying up the garden and have piles of rubble all over the place. One of our rickety old fences borders a graveyard (very old belonging to ancient church) and I'm assuming the skull sort of drifted under our fence and has been near the top of the soil for a while. I hope.

I've googled but can't seem to find much info. I'll be contacting the parish council on Monday but wondered if it warrants a call to 101 (or whatever it is) to register it just in case it's not a graveyard wanderer

Anyone had a similar experience?!

Puritans! You really are Ruth Gallowy!

O u r i a n a

Not Putitans

Now you're just being frivolous, zzzz - it's obviously a komodo.

Better contact the rozzers again, OP - dragons operating in the vicinity.

I love the thinking of whoever assembled the bone-scaling femur set:

"Right, I want the basics - the ones that crop up constantly. So I'll go Komodo, Sabre Toothed Tiger, Goliath Frog. Yup, that should cover it".

We were just in Ypres this week, and our lovely guide told us he attends every funeral they hold for then soldiers still being found by Farmers, 100 years later. Apparently it will be another 100 years to find all the ammunition and remaining bodies that are there.

.

I don't think it's particularly weird to want to keep the skull. I hope not anyway. I have a ewe's skull on display in my living room. Nobody comments that it's weird.

RE the trade of human tissues thing...bone is tissue I think. Just not soft.

Poor soldiers.

What a marvellous marvellous thread. I love the way there's an expert I on everything on MN.

I loved the casual "I'm an archaeologist and ostiologist" comment

RIP YS

This thread is fascinating. Keep us updated OP! :)

☆~~~☆

That's a bone (and a place mark )

You guys seriously rock! I'm not sure my RL friends would be so interested in my accidental collection of dead stuff.

I will go out and measure them both. I've attached the cropped pic of YS's head so he won't be intentified. Can anyone else see the small hole??? Surrounded by blood?

In conclusion, I'm living somewhere in between the Shire and Bree, and there may be hobbit-eating Dragons, Komodo dragons or sabre-toothed Tigers (I'm keeping the autocorrected capitals there to keep them all sweet) hiding in the badger set on the other side of our hedge. Great.

Back in a tick with the stats.

*identified. I've had more wine to cope with all the stress.

Also, the attached photo. And I'd like to clarify that I didn't egotistically think PC Up-and-down was eyeing me up. DH spotted it.

Poor Yorik. Was trepanning a thing in Shakespeare land at any point?

PC upanddown was probably looking for bloodstains.

By my estimation, that skull looks really old!

There, no need for the expert analysis now.

Will you get you garden dug up and turned over for free now OP? It's one way of avoiding having to do the gardening and weeding yourself

Omg that's amazing. But what would make a hole like that? And how would the blood stain the bone just around the hole? When were guns invented? Wouldn't a bullet hole cause the skull the shatter? Were there any olden day screwdriver through the head type capital punishment?!

So many questions! Brilliant thread!

Let's see the front then!

It looks like a narrow blade entered the head, poor Yorick.

That hole is just too small and neat to be a bullet hole or anything that's impacted or hit the skull with force, imo.

Maybe it's a drill hole, like from surgery to relief pressure on the brain? Or a worm has eaten it's way through the skull?

A strong hat pin?