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(WFLA) — A woman who spends time shelling on two Florida beaches found something in the sand that sent chills up her family’s spines.
Rebecca Dodds said she was searching for shells on Captiva Beach on Wednesday when she spotted something unusual.
“I thought I found a whalebone or something and I just threw it in my shell bag,” Dodds told WINK.
What Dodds thought was some kind of marine animal turned out to be a human jaw.
She told the news station that she wondered if the bone could be from a Hurricane Ian victim or from a missing person’s case. An archaeologist told WINK that it could also be centuries old and from an indigenous person.
“The number one concern is that it could be recent and associated with some kind of recent, potentially, a crime. And no one can make that determination except for law enforcement,” Sara Ayers-Rigsby, region director of the Florida Public Archaeology Network, told WINK.
Dodds said she hopes the person can be identified.
“It’s still surreal right now. It’s kind of disbelief. But at the same time, I’m curious. It’s very sad. I do hope they can find out who. This person has a story,” Dodds told WINK.
Ayers-Rigsby said if law enforcement officers believe the remains have been lost for more than 75 years, they will contact the state’s archaeologist and begin working with descendants of the Calusa tribe to try to identify who it belonged to.
