TULAROSA — A contractor digging up a yard in Tularosa to find a leak in a sprinkler system found old bones instead.
The human remains, estimated to be up to 4,000 years old, were discovered earlier this month about 4 feet down in the front yard. The home’s owner, Bill Turner, called police, who contacted the Otero County sheriff, who called the medical examiner in Alamogordo.
“I ended up with a lot of different officials at my house,” Turner said.
When the officials determined the remains were not modern, they left.
The homeowner turned to Pete Eidenbach, a professor of archaeology at the Alamogordo branch of New Mexico State University, who came to the site to examine the bones.
Eidenbach, in an e-mail explaining his findings to Turner, said the remains belonged to a young male who lived before A.D. 500.
“This man is anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 years old. He is Indian, probably a Jornada Mogollon,” Eidenbach wrote.
“This is a very sensitive issue,” Eidenbach said Wednesday. “It is sensitive both at the state and federal level due to the fact that these are human remains of a Native American, regardless of how old it is.”
