The Mystery of a Human Skull Found in Flathead Lake
What an eerie experience it must have been to make a discovery like this.
And while details are still sketchy, clues and evidence will hopefully combine to give us a clearer story and narrow the focus of who this could possibly be. It may be a long shot, but the find gives authorities a profile to at least put some pieces of the puzzle together.
The Lake County Sheriff and Coroner’s Office has received updated information regarding the human skull that was located in Flathead Lake back in June of this year. The Montana Forensic Science Lab in MIssoula enlisted the assistance of an anthropological expert, who determined that the skull is that of a Native American male over the age of 18, but most likely between 30 and 60 years of age.
That is a very broad brush, but certainly not unusual in such cases to present a rather wide potential age range of the victim. But based in part on observations of the teeth in the skull, the report states it is "archeological", or "historical in nature", and therefore does not belong to a modern human. At this time, there is no crime suspected surrounding the discovery of the skull. And as we post this, we did not find any information on whether there are estimates of how long the skull may have been in the water.
The Lake County Sheriff and Coroner’s Office is working in conjunction with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe's (CSKT) Preservation Department on repatriation of the remains in an effort to determine if further DNA testing is desired by the CSKT Cultural Committee.