Inquest looms on 200-year-old skull
21.12.2007
By Don Farmer
An ancient skull of a white female found near Featherston and with what appears to be injuries inflicted on it could prove to be a testing finale for outgoing Masterton District Coroner Jock Kershaw.
A forensic scientist and a very experienced consultant forensic pathologist both examined the skull in Auckland.
Their conclusion was the skull was "not Maori" and "clearly the skull of an adult woman".
The experts put the time of death only as "beyond living memory" but when it was forwarded to the Environmental Science and Research laboratory for carbon-14 dating an accurate finding on its age was made.
Police are not willing to make public the age of the skull before the inquest but have confirmed, in information requested under the Official Information Act, the mid-1700s as being "in the ball park".
Could we have a few inaccuracies in the history books?
Never mind- this inconvenient find will soon disappear...
3 comments:
WTF???
It might have been Cooks doxy - he arrived here in Oct 1769.
And Tasman was here late in 1642, if I remember aright. May have had a travlling bordello with him?
Or she was a survivor of a ship blown off course that was crossing the Pacific from Spanish colonies in the Americas to their colonies in Asia.
Brian Smaller
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