TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – Authorities in Texas are investigating what appears to be a homicide after workers on a ranch in Bexar County discovered human remains inside a piece of luggage.

The gruesome discovery was made Thursday morning around 10:45, Sheriff Javier Salazar of the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release this week.

“Some folks that were out here feeding animals … saw a duffel bag of some sort, a piece of luggage, out in the middle of the property,” Salazar said. “They began investigating it and found what appears to be human remains.”

The suitcase containing the remains wasn’t hidden or obscured, but rather left on the side of a hilly area, according to Salazar.

“There really wasn’t a whole lot of effort to hide the body, other than it was inside a suitcase,” he said.

Salazar said Thursday that investigators were not yet sure whether the victim was killed at the scene, or if the person had been killed somewhere else and then dumped at the ranch.

“The first inclination is to assume it’s a homicide scene. … We won’t be able to determine cause of death, manner of death, or the identity of the victim for some time,” Salazar said, adding that investigators hadn’t yet able to determine a time of death, or even the gender of the victim.

In addition to the suitcase, Salazar noted that there had been “an effort to burn” something on the property, but could not yet say whether the burn marks were related to the remains.

“It’s possible that that may not be related to the body at all. Out here, we know it’s pretty common in a rural area for people to burn trash,” he said, noting that the local fire marshal will work to determine where the burn marks came from.

The owners of the ranch were out of town when the remains were found, according to the sheriff. They are cooperating with authorities.

Officials had planned to get a search warrant to “finish processing the scene,” Salazar said Thursday.