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Skull in Tomb of Poet Petrarch Is Not His

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From Times Staff and Wire Reports

A scientific team that had been hoping to reconstruct the features of the great Italian poet Petrarch has confirmed that the skull found in his tomb is not his. The skull belongs to a woman who died before the poet was born, project leader Vito Terribile Wiel Marin said Tuesday.

Carbon dating of a skull fragment showed that the head belonged to someone who died between 1134 and 1280. Petrarch, considered second only to Dante among Italian poets, died in 1374.

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