"The body of a man who died high on Mount McKinley decades ago was discovered by climbers over the weekend after it began to emerge from the snow, the National Park Service said Tuesday. The Park Service has not identified the body but has narrowed the possibilities and believes the most likely is a 32-year-old Wyoming man who died of acute mountain sickness in 1969, the agency said."

"Cutting edge computer technology and medical scanning techniques have created a world's first at the British Museum - the secrets of an Egyptian mummy are to be revealed without disturbing its case. The museum's exhibition, Mummy: The Inside Story - which opens on Thursday - is set to unveil a new chapter in the research of Egyptian civilisation. Visitors will be able to see inside an unopened mummy case thanks to a revolutionary 3D virtual reality experience."

"Laker or Clipper? Hard to tell with this basketball player. Not only is he not wearing a team jersey, he's not wearing his own skin. This nameless, skinless 'athlete' has just arrived in Los Angeles from Frankfurt, Germany, to be part of the American premiere of the popular but controversial 'Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies,' opening Friday at the California Science Center in Exposition Park."

"New Zealand has welcomed a decision by a Scottish museum to return three tattooed heads of 19th century Maoris."

"For more than 50 years, rancher Waldo Wilcox kept most outsiders off his land and the secret under wraps: a string of ancient Indian settlements so remarkably well-preserved that arrowheads and beads are still lying out in the open...Hidden deep inside Utah's nearly inaccessible Book Cliffs region, 130 miles from Salt Lake City, the prehistoric villages run for 12 miles and include hundreds of rock art panels, cliffside granaries, stone houses built halfway underground, rock shelters, and the mummified remains of long-ago inhabitants."

"Three preserved 19th century Maori heads that were hidden away in a Glasgow Museum for more than 50 years are being returned to their native New Zealand. Glasgow Council voted unanimously today to repatriate the tattooed preserved heads, called "toi moko," and an 18th century leg bone of a Maori warrior chief...The remains were donated to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow from various sources between 1900 and 1950 and placed under the trusteeship of the council. They were never put on display...The remains are showing evidence of their age. The council notes that the skin on two of the heads has been extensively eaten away by moths and the third has a badly cracked jaw."

"Hunters discovered the frozen body of Kwaday Dan Ts'inchi (Long Ago Person Found) in August 1999 while crossing a glacier high in the mountains of north-west British Columbia, Canada, about 60 miles from southern Alaska. Now, some of the mysteries of ancient civilisation in North America are about to be revealed when scientists unveil some of the details of the last journey of the only well preserved ancient human body ever recovered in the region."

"A mummy more than 3,000 years old and other items have been stolen from a Pharaonic tomb near this southern Egyptian city, a senior antiquity official said Tuesday. The missing objects were taken from the tomb of a nobleman who lived in the time of Pharaoh Akhenaton, who ruled in 1379-1362 B.C., said Sabri Abdel Aziz of Egypt's antiquity department."

"After being wrapped, mummies were encased in "papyrus-mache" coverings made of recycled documents written on papyrus, the plant-based Egyptian equivalent of paper, said Todd Hickey, curator of Berkeley's immense horde of papyri extracted from mummy casings. Of the large deposits of papyri known to exist around the world, the university's holds special fascination for scholars because it is the least mined, said professor Karl-Theodor Zauzich, a highly regarded authority on ancient Egyptian writing."

"...But what he is most excited about is the unusual source of this genetic information. It's not from old bones or teeth, but fossilized feces, or coprolites , which he believes will reveal more about ancient human and pre-human life than any other source of DNA...Getting information from fossilized feces may seem like a long shot. After all, as anyone with a dog knows, droppings quickly erode with rain and snow...However, in dry environments -- including caves, deserts and high-altitude areas -- feces are commonly preserved and found as part of archeological and paleontological digs."

"A barrage of medical tests found a heart and brain in an Egyptian mummy belonging to the Louisville Science Center — but its sex remains a mystery...a radiologist who supervised the CT work...is about 85 percent certain that Then-Hotep is female because of the shape of the pelvis, the hospital and science center said after the tests."

"An Egyptian mummy that has endured a century in Louisville museums, a devastating flood and decapitation holds secrets that scientists hope to crack this week. The mysteries of the mummy include its age, sex and cause of death. To solve the riddles, the mummy — named Then-Hotep and believed to be about 2,500 years old — will undergo tests at Baptist Hospital East. Then it will be prepared for display in "The World Around Us," a permanent $4.3million exhibit at the Louisville Science Center opening next June."

"Peruvian customs agents opening suspicious packages found five ancient skulls from a pre-Inca culture that someone tried to mail to California, authorities said Friday. The mummified skulls, estimated to be as old as 2,700 years, turned up during inspections June 5 and 6. Customs agents put the five packages through an X-ray machine because they emitted a disagreeable odor. Shipping claims outside the boxes said they contained gifts; inside, fake government certificates claimed the skulls were on authorized loan for anthropological study and cultural exhibition."

"France's royalists staged a pageant-filled funeral Tuesday for a tiny, rock-hard relic that they hailed as the heart of Louis XVII, who died at age 10 in a filthy revolutionary prison. A hearse brimming with lilies -- the symbol of the French crown -- delivered a crystal vase containing the heart to the Saint-Denis Basilica. There, it was placed in a royal crypt containing the remains of Louis XVII's parents, Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI."

"The best preserved example in Wales of a medieval track, which dates back 1,000 years, has been unearthed by archaeologists in Ceredigion. The small team claims the structure, made up of thick wooden beams, has been protected by a peat bog which has covered it for centuries."

"Cultural heritage workers have unearthed from a cluster of ancient tombs in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region a coffin with a well-dressed corpse and some valuable chinaware pieces inside."

"An ominous and ancient shrunken head, nestled in a display case, protected behind plate glass. It's an image that lingers today for Betsey Bayless, 60, more than 50 years after her first field trip to the Heard Museum in central Phoenix.... Although the shriveled relic actually hailed from Africa, an equally eerie mummy gleaned from an in-state ruin was also displayed prominently.... The Heard Museum has long since removed the shrunken head and mummy from any displays while continually adding to its collection of art and artifacts, all designed to overwhelm and inspire not just the young, but the seasoned museumgoers as well."

"The heart of the 10-year-old heir to France's throne was cut from his body when he died in prison, pickled, stolen, returned, and DNA-tested two centuries later. Next week, Louis XVII's heart will be placed in France's royal crypt north of Paris now that genetic testing has persuaded many historians that the tiny petrified heart is almost certainly the real thing."