Halloween has come and gone, but for an anthropologist shopping at a thrift store in Florida, it has just begun.
The female anthropologist, who was not named as of writing, discovered a human skull while she was shopping at Paradise Vintage Market in North Fort Myers over the weekend. The shopper called the Lee County Sheriff's Office (LCSO) to investigate the skull.
"This is definitely different," LCSO's Captain Anita Iriarte told Newsweek in a phone interview on Sunday (November 5). "We don't usually get a call from an antique store that there's a human skull out on the floor."
The sheriff's office took the skull for testing and the District 21 Medical Examiner's Office suspected that the skull once belonged to a human being who has since died, Iriate added, further saying that the skull would go through additional testing at the medical examiner's office before being sent to Gainesville for long-term testing to determine where it came from, how old it was, and other details that could be uncovered.
"It was found in a Halloween section," Iriarte added. "What's been described is that the antique shop was having a fossil day, so this female, an anthropologist, was shopping and noticed the skull and then was like, 'This is definitely not a Halloween decoration.'"
Authorities added that the case was "not suspicious in nature."
Forensic Experts Identify Human Skull as at least 75 Years Old
During the testing procedure, the skull was estimated to be "about 75 years old," with no noted trauma to the skull, or anything that indicated a brutal death.
"There's nothing that leads them to believe that this skull has been preserved by suspicious means of any sort," Iriarte said.
According to the LCSO, the store owner said the skull was found in a storage unit that was purchased several years ago.
Meanwhile, Paradise Vintage Market managing partner Beth Meyer said that the store was an antique mall that spanned 32,000 square feet (2,972 square meters) and had more than 125 dealers and 180 booth spaces. She called the human skull incident "an interesting and unusual experience."
"A sheriff's deputy asked to speak to me about a report that we had a human skull at the store," Meyer added. "A shopper had called it in; she is an anthropologist and had concerns that the skull might be Native American."
If the skull was confirmed to be of Native American origin, it would be returned to one of the local tribes and would be transferred in a ceremony, Meyer added.