Museum to display 6,500-year-old human skeleton

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FILE - In this Aug. 5, 2014, file photo, 6,500-year-old human remains are displayed at the The Penn Museum, part of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The public will soon get to see an ancient human skeleton beginning Saturday Aug. 30, 2014, at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Museum. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The public will soon get to see an ancient human skeleton recently rediscovered in a Philadelphia museum's storage room.

Visitors can look at the 6,500-year-old remains beginning Saturday at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Museum.

Archaeologists first excavated the specimen from southern Iraq around 1930. But it sat for decades in the museum's basement without any documentation.

Museum officials confirmed its origins this summer while digitizing their collection.

The skeleton will be displayed in the museum's Artifact Lab. The space allows people to watch as conservators work to preserve artifacts and mummies.

Researchers believe the bones belong to a 50-year-old man from the Ubaid period, which lasted from 5500 to 4000 B.C. Complete human skeletons from that era are rare.