“Durante una excavación arqueológica en Sayre, condado de Bradford, Pensilvania, en la década de 1880, se desenterraron varios cráneos humanos”, se lee en la publicación de Facebook.
“Estos esqueletos eran anatómicamente correctos, excepto por la anomalía de sus proyecciones: dos ‘cuernos’ distintos de dos pulgadas por encima de la ceja, y el hecho de que su altura promedio en vida habría sido de alrededor de dos metros”.
La publicación afirma que los huesos fueron enviados al “Museo de Investigación Estadounidense” en Filadelfia, donde fueron robados, “para no ser vistos nunca más”.
No hay evidencia de cráneos humanos con cuernos, esqueletos con gigantismo
Algunas personas crecen a un tamaño inusual, y se han encontrado esqueletos antiguos de personas que sufren de gigantismo.
That’s a genetic disorder caused when individuals experience abnormal linear growth due to excessive action of insulin-like growth factors, said Erin Kimmerle, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Central Florida.
“Basically you keep growing even though the growth plates are fused,” Kimmerle said in an email.
“The frequency is believed to be about 8 cases per 1 million people. I am not sure if it was more frequent in the past because earlier testing and treatments are possible now.”
But the horned skull shown in the Facebook post is a fake, Kimmerly said. USA TODAY found no credible news or scientific reports of any such discovery.
Researchers at the Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology described the tale of horned giants in Pennsylvania as a compilation of stories that, with time, took on a life of their own.
Newspaper articles from the 19th and early 20th centuries included multiple versions of the story.
Peabody researchers attributed the references of giant skeletons to misidentified extinct animal species and to written records that exaggerated the height of individuals who were tall for the time.
While the University of Pennsylvania has a collection of 1,300 crania included in the Penn Museum’s Morton Collection, there is no museum with the name “American Investigating Museum, as the post claims. Kimmerle confirmed the museum does not exist.
