Skull fragment found on Indiana riverbank turns out to be 4,200 years old: ‘Powerful and humbling’

A mysterious skull fragment found on an Indiana riverbed over the summer turned out to be incredible instead of incriminating — with forensics determining it was more than 4,000 years old.

The fragment was found in an eroding bank of the Whitewater River in Fayette County in June by a local landowner, who quickly notified local law enforcement and prompted an investigation.

Officials shipped the skull piece off to the University of Indianapolis Human Identification Center, which called on the University of Georgia for further help.

And their findings were remarkable — rather than being a missing John or Jane Doe, the fragment turned out to be the remains of somebody who died around 2300 BCE, or about 4,270 years ago, the Fayette County Coroner’s Office announced Monday.

That means the skull would have belonged to a Native American who likely lived and died in the area.

“This remarkable discovery is a powerful and humbling reminder that people have walked this land, our home in Fayette County, for millennia,” the coroner’s office said in a statement. “It calls upon all of us to handle this matter with the utmost respect and diligence.”

The fragment — which was from the back of a head and about the size of an adult hand — belonged to an adult, though it was unclear if it came from a man or a woman, Coroner Eddie Richardson told the New York Times.

And the individual’s skull did not appear to have been broken through any kind of trauma, but was simply degraded from millennia outdoors and exposure to the elements.

Indigenous people are believed to have first arrived in Indiana around 10,000 years ago, with numerous tribes and groups living in the area across history.

It remains unclear which community the individual belonged to, but officials are working with archeological experts from the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma in hopes of identifying its cultural origins.

The coroner’s office is also coordinating with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and plan to manage or, if possible, return the fragment to a tribe “according to cultural and legal standards.”

Further archeological investigations could also be undertaken at the discovery site, about 60 miles east of Indianapolis.