Pa. Museum To Display 6,500-Year-Old 'Noah' Skeleton

A 6,500-year-old skeleton recently discovered in a storage closet at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania will be put on display for public viewing.

The skeleton, originally recovered from the Iraq in 1930, had sat in storage at the Penn Museum for decades, and its worth was only discovered when researchers digitalized their records and discovered how rare the skeleton actually was.

The skeleton serves an important archaeological purpose because it is a complete human skeleton, a rare find from the era of the Ubaid period that lasted from 5500 to 4000 B.C. The remains reportedly belong to a 50-year-old man, and he has been nicknamed Noah as layers of shale discovered above his burial site indicate the man had survived a great flood before his death. 

The fascinating discovery will be moved to a public viewing portion of the museum on August 30, Julian Siggers, the Penn Museum Williams Director, said in a press release.

"Our goal as a museum and research institution is to share what we love with the public — the thrill of discovery, or in this case, the thrill of re-discovery," Siggers said. "Exploring and investigating our shared human past, whether it be in the field, in the lab, in the archives, or in storage, is what makes the field of archaeology and anthropology so exciting for us. We hope our visitors can join us as we make these fascinating connections."

The museum previously said that when they first discovered the skeleton in their storage area, a preliminary search on their database indicated the remains had "not [been] accounted for" since 1990.