—Fake crystal Aztec skulls “” A fake crystal Aztec skull There’s a great report out about how the British Museum and the Smithsonian teamed up to prove that two crystal skulls, one at each museum, are actually fakes. Both skulls were purportedly made by Aztecs in Mexico prior to Columbus’ arrival. The British Museum bought its skull from Tiffany and Co. in 1897 while the Smithsonian received its skull in 1960 from an anonymous donor. Although skulls are common motifs in Aztec art, museum curators at both institutions were suspicious of the skulls for a couple of reasons. For one, neither skull comes from well-documented official archaeological excavations. Also something was weird with the teeth. To quote the report: “The rigid linearity of features representing teeth contrasts with the more precise execution of teeth on pre-Columbian artefacts.”
by Sarah Everts | January 30, 2013
Walsh has traced fake crystal skulls at the British Museum and the Quai Branly Museum back to Boban, who sold them to art dealers who then sold them to the museums more than 100 years ago. The Smithsonian skull, however, showed up in the mail in 1992, as an anonymous donation. Its arrival motivated Walsh to contact the British Museum to discuss the skulls.
by Sarah Everts | March 04, 2013
—This Week On CENtral Science: Fake Crystal Skulls, Too Many Bachelor's Degree Chemists, and More “” Hey CENtral Science readers- I'm in the throes of ScienceOnline2013. A confab of this many scientists and sci-communicators means I had tons of material for tweet-of-the-week selection. I pick a tweet with a purpose.
by Carmen Drahl | February 01, 2013
By medical oddities, I mean a wall of human skulls from around the world, slices of Albert Einstein's brain, a cast of the conjoined twins Cheng and Eng, floating body parts exhibiting gangrene and other diseases, as well as the museum's pièce de résistance, the cadaver of an obese woman who turned into a giant piece of soap instead of degrading like deceased bodies normally do.
by Sarah Everts | January 10, 2012
REESE Pericú skulls look much like human skulls found in Brazil that are 8,000 to 11,000 years old. And the Brazilian skulls look strikingly like the skulls of today's Australian aborigines, say González-José and his colleagues. Moreover, they argue, the data indicate that the Pericú were unrelated to modern Native American and Eastern Asian peoples.
by BY K. M. REESE | September 29, 2003
A military lab is now printing 3-D models of the skulls of living people to refine its techniques for identifying the remains of prisoners of war (POWs) and soldiers missing in action (MIA). Located on Oahu, in Hawaii, the Central Identification Laboratory of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) is the largest forensic anthropology lab in the world. One of the methods used by the lab to help identify the remains of soldiers is a quantitative skull/photograph superimposition technique, which involves aligning an old photo of a missing serviceman with an image of a recovered skull. The overlapped images are resized and oriented for a “best fit,” and then the composite is comparatively scored in areas such as the nasal aperture’s length and width, the teeth and lip alignment, and the mandible’s length and fit with chin shape, according to Audrey L.
by Lauren Wolf | November 10, 2010
Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a consortium of eight commercial power companies, plans to build an aboveground facility to store 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Skull Valley, Utah. By a 3-to-1 vote, NRC rejected Utah’s request for review of a February ruling by the Atomic Safety & Licensing Board. That board had rejected the state’s claim that the thousands of flights over Skull Valley each year by military aircraft from nearby Hill Air Force Base pose an unacceptable risk of an accidental crash into the facility and a catastrophic release of radiation. The proposed independent facility is designed to be temporary and would operate until the Department of Energy’s long-delayed permanent storage site for commercial waste opens at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.
September 19, 2005
Murphy and coworkers report that four adult male skulls now housed in two Russian museums came from Scythians whose scalps were removed after they died in battle. Murphy says an intermittent trail of incisions, made by metal tools, runs ear-to-ear across the back of each skull. She contends that the skin was peeled from the backs and tops of the skulls. Study of the skeletons that came with the skulls suggests that their owners died of sword and battle-ax wounds. The authors say further studies of skeletons at Russian sites will probably support Herodotus' view that scalping was a widespread practice of Scythians. But he may have erred in saying the Asian warriors were cannibals.
by BY K. M. REESE | March 04, 2002
Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a consortium of eight commercial power companies, plans to build an aboveground facility to store 44,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Skull Valley, Utah. By a 3 to 1 vote, NRC rejected Utah’s request for review of a February ruling by the Atomic Safety & Licensing Board. That board had rejected the state’s claim that the thousands of flights over the Skull Valley each year by military aircraft from nearby Hill Air Force Base pose an unacceptable risk of an accidental crash into the facility and a catastrophic release of radiation. The proposed independent facility is designed to be temporary and would operate until the Department of Energy’s long-delayed permanent storage site for commercial waste opens at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.
by Glenn Hess | September 19, 2005