Human Remains Amongst Bone Horde Found In Saudi Arabian Ancient Lava Tube

An extraordinary horde of bones – including human remains – preserved inside a lava tube for thousands of years has been discovered in Saudi Arabia.

The deserts of the Arabian Peninsula are notoriously reluctant to give away their ancient secrets, and offer an exceptionally scant fossil record that continually frustrates paleontologists. This discovery finally illuminates the prehistory of this enigmatic region.

Described in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, the grisly collection includes the bones of horses, donkeys, gazelles, camels, and cattle, as well as multiple human skull fragments. Numbering in the hundreds of thousands, the bones appear to have been amassed over a period of 7,000 years. They were discovered inside the Umm Jirsan cave which sits within Saudi Arabia’s Harrat Khaybar lava field.

“The Harrat Khaybar lava tubes represent an untapped resource in a region where bone and fossil preservation is otherwise exceptionally poor,” write the study authors. “Such sites have the potential to inform on the paleoecology and prehistory of this understudied region.”

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https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/human-remains-found-amongst-ancient-lava-tube-bone-horde-in-saudi-arabia/