A shopper at an antique store in southwest Florida discovered a human skull in the store Saturday, local authorities said.
“The shopper, who happened to be an anthropologist, noticed the skull in the Halloween section and recognized it to be human,” a statement from the Lee County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) said.
Detectives responding to the thrift shopper’s report preliminarily examined the skull and believed it to be a human skull before taking it away, the statement noted.
The store purchased a storage unit in which the skull was some years ago, the store owner said, per the statement. The District 21 Medical Examiner’s Office reportedly would carry out further tests on the skull.
“This is definitely different. We don’t usually get a call from an antique store that there’s a human skull out on the floor,” LCSO Captain Anita Iriarte said, according to Newsweek.
The skull will undergo long-term testing after the medical examiner’s tests, to determine its origin, age, and any other detail that can be obtained, Iriarte added.
There was nothing suspicious about the case, the LSCO statement concluded. (RELATED: Cluster Bomb, Ammunition Found In Thrift Store Donation)
“What’s preliminarily been decided is it’s like an archeological bone. The skull is estimated to be about 75 years old. There’s no noted trauma to the skull. There’s nothing that leads them to believe that this skull has been preserved by suspicious means of any sort,” Iriarte added.
Beth Meyer, managing partner at the store, reportedly said the concerned shopper believed, based on her training, that the skull was Native American. “If it is Native American, it will be returned to one of the local tribes and we will have a ceremony,” Meyer said in part, Newsweek reported.
The store purchased the storage unit in which the skull was just before Hurricane Ian swept through Florida in Sept. 2022, Meyer reportedly said.
“I actually put the skull on display in my rock shop a year later in September 2023,” Meyer said, per Newsweek. “I thought it would be interesting to have out for Halloween.”