A nearly complete set of skeletal remains were discovered by two hikers Tuesday in the Hollywood Hills area just outside Los Angeles, KTLA reported.
Daniel Dayton said he was hiking with his brother Tuesday afternoon when he came across what he thought were animal bones in the dirt by a creek bed.
"So I bent down and was looking at them and then I looked over to my left...and there was a human leg protruding out of the dirt with pants still on it," Dayton told the station. He also found a jacket nearby.
Los Angeles police were called to the scene and by Wednesday, after five hours of digging, the Los Angeles County Coroner was working to identify the remains.
"We recovered a fairly complete skeletal set," Craig Harvey, a spokesman for the coroner's office, told Reuters. "There are some things we didn't get, but we got the important stuff- skull, mandible."
It remains unclear how the remains, described by Dayton as mummy-like, ended up in a wash that runs through the hills near the 3300 block of Bonnie Hill Drive.
"They do not appear to have been buried," Harvey told Reuters. "The possibility exists that this person died in the wash and over the years runoff deposited soil on and around the body."
Officials did note they believe the individual died about two years ago. The investigation is ongoing.
