Mystery Skull

The skull sits on a shelf in a room where human bones are more common than human beings. Sex and age are unknown, let alone identity.

In a temperature-controlled corner of the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, it awaits a forensic anthropologist’s examination that authorities hope will unravel the tale of how it came to be found recently by hikers in Topanga State Park.

Is it an Indian relic that washed down from a sacred burial site? Is it the remains of a modern-day homicide victim? Or a lone hiker who wandered in too far and met an accidental death?

“It’s very unusual,” said Sgt. Ron Spear of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “We don’t get cases like this every week.”

The skull was found March 1 in a dry riverbed deep in the hilly terrain of the state park. Deputies from the Lost Hills sheriff’s station retrieved it after pinpointing its location with the help of a department rescue helicopter.

Despite the initial flurry of excitement surrounding the skull’s discovery, authorities are proceeding slowly with their investigation--pending the results of the forensic anthropologist’s examination, Spear said.

It will be weeks--possibly months--before the coroner hires a forensic anthropologist consultant to examine the skull, said Scott Carrier, a coroner’s office spokesman.

The lengthy wait is due to the limited access that Los Angeles County has to a handful of specialists--mostly university anthropology professors--who contract their services to various Southern California counties, Carrier said. And, though it is not known how old the skull is, the remains do not appear to belong to a recently deceased person.

“This is not a priority case,” he said.

The Sheriff’s Department received 2,000 missing persons reports last year, of which about 100 remain unsolved, said Det. Jacque Franco. The answer to one of those cases may rest with the skull. But all that investigators know for certain so far is that their specimen is a “large skull.”

Once a forensic anthropologist is assigned to the case, he or she will consider everything from the skull’s size to its placement in the dirt where it was found.

Phillip Walker, a UC Santa Barbara anthropology professor who often is consulted by law enforcement agencies, said that in the cases he has worked, bones found aboveground have rarely been Indian relics. Such remains are usually found as a result of digging, generally at known archeological sites.

“You have to look at all the facts and narrow down the possibilities,” he said.

The Topanga skull seems to resemble fairly common cases in which a person dies accidentally or is killed in a wilderness area, said Walker, who has not yet seen the skull. As the body decomposes, Walker said, scavengers rip it apart, scattering it as far as a few miles.

Later, individual bones are found without a trace of the rest of the body.

The most reliable way to identify a skull is through dental records, Walker said. The forensic anthropologist would examine the skull’s jaws and remaining teeth and compare them with the dental records of missing persons in an attempt to find a match.

“That is often conclusive,” Walker said. “Which tooth has a filling? Which tooth is missing?”

The technique often fails, however, when the skull belongs to a young person who may not have had any dental work done.

Another identification method could include drawing DNA from the skull if some flesh or bone marrow remains attached, Walker said. The DNA could be compared with samples belonging to relatives of a missing person.

The age could also be determined partially by examining the teeth. Missing wisdom teeth could indicate the person is a child, Walker said. The teeth of an older person would be more worn.

Other features of the skull, such as loosely connected bones, would indicate youth, he said. Bones fuse together as a person ages.

The size and development of some bones could reveal the sex. Men have larger bones around the ear, Walker said. Their chins are also larger and tend to have two points at the bottom, which resemble dimples on some men.

“Kirk Douglas, if you look at him, has two dimples,” Walker said. “That’s an indication that he has a highly developed chin. He’s highly masculine.”

Women, by contrast, have narrower chins that end with a single point.

Anthropologists can be more accurate in determining age when profiling younger people because bone and tooth development happens in distinct and close-together stages. But adults’ bones continue their development more slowly, over longer periods of time.

Other possible clues from the skull include signs of violence, such as a bullet hole, indentation or cracks, Walker said. And the approximate time of death can be determined by the amount of tissue still attached to the bones.

Once enough clues are gathered, investigators can begin combing through missing persons cases in California and throughout the country and share their information with other police agencies, Franco said. If evidence of foul play is found, authorities would formally begin a criminal investigation.

“You have to look at who is [reported] missing,” he said. “In many cases, you have a Jane Doe that may never get identified.”