WEEK IN REVIEW : Major Events, Images And People in Orange County News : AT THE SCENE : Laura Bradbury Case Rekindled by Bone Find

Two Marines hiking in the desert of Joshua Tree National Monument found an odd-looking bone fragment under a bush, picked it up and the next day they gave it to sheriff’s deputies. The discovery rekindled the massive search that had occurred there 1 1/2 years earlier.

The fragment was the top of a child’s skull, and it had been found only about a mile from the campsite where 3-year-old Laura Bradbury of Huntington Beach had followed her brother to an outdoor toilet, had disappeared and had become a national symbol for campaigns for missing children.

There was no known direct connection between the skull fragment and the Bradbury case, but deputies sent 130 searchers to comb the 2 1/2-square-mile area and sent word to the Bradbury family, which was taking its first vacation since Laura disappeared. The family had been devoting all its time trying to track down the missing child.

The search turned up more bones, but investigators said that wasn’t surprising. Stranded mountaineers sometimes die in that area, and bodies occasionally are dumped there from murders committed elsewhere, they said.

The most significant bone remained the skull fragment, and that, plus some smaller pieces found near it, were turned over to Cal State Fullerton anthropologist Judy Suchey for analysis.

Suchey, however, could determine only that the skull was from a child age 2 to 5 who had died not more than two years earlier. The skull had been exposed to the sun three to four months, she reported. The sex or race of the child could not be determined, she said.

Investigators said they would send the bone fragments to the FBI’s laboratory in Virginia for further analysis.

Laura’s father, Mike Bradbury, who has organized a private search for Laura, said he was skeptical about the bone fragments being the remains of his daughter. He said he still believes that Laura was kidnaped, taken outside California and sold by an adoption ring.