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?!

Pooka, walking? blimey that would freak me out. Although I suppose a nice beach walk is a treat whatever state you are in.

Oooo placemarking to find out what happens to YS!

When we were teenagers my friend was always talking about finding a dead body on the beach whenever we would walk there. Never found out of course but didn't stop her going "argh dead body!" every time she turned a corner or went over a mound of stones.

I found a body on a beach when I was at university. Out walking with my flatmate while staying at her parents' house and taking the dog out. Body of man on beach, washed in by tide. He turned out to be homeless. It was very sad.

I imagine she wouldn't have been so excited if she had been faced with an actual dead body.

Are you an medic or similar, Ouriana? Cos I'd say the femur/pelvis is definitely not human unless the owner had some weird deformity I've never heard of. In a human, the femur and ischium (ring bit of the pelvis) are separate bones, whereas in this specimen they are continuous.

Absolutely place marking, fascinating!

Pictures of human femur and ischium attached.

whoops - sorry - multiple femurs!

Human ischium - the ring shaped bit at the bottom

No clue on sheep/cow anatomy, but I still don't think the femur looks human - the shape of the head is all wrong and it is too thick to be that of a child but too short to be that of an adult.

Love that I'm digging up (!) my memories of anatomy lectures to debate this on a Sunday pm though

You will wake up in the night
And there will be a headless ghost sitting on your bed.

People were shorter in Olden times

Yeah but they weren't hobbits . Based on the number of blades of grass next to it, I'd say that bone is around 15 cm long and the average adult male femur is 48 cm. It is too thick and fully-formed to be a child's femur.

There are some rare diseases that makes bones denser than normal and odd shapes so I'm not saying it's impossible that it is human, but I think it is very unlikely.

Measure it, OP, measure it!!

People were buried outside of churchyards up to quite recent times.

My GF committed suicide in the late 1950s because he just couldn't cope with his DW's death a couple of years earlier and his profound PTS from WW1 returned. Much to my DM's horror the local church refused to bury him next to his beloved wife, despite the fact he had been an active member of the church for many years. He was buried the other side of the church wall in unconsecrated ground.

OP, Have the drive and trees been there for a very long time? I wonder whether the roots of the trees have forced up the bones in some way.

So, OP, did you expect to spend your Sunday afternoon fending off complete strangers badgering you on social media to measure skeletal remains?

(Do it, though!)

Yorick would be a great name for a hipster's baby. Anyone up to suggesting it on the baby names topic?