By sheer speed and strength Blade smashed the man's guard down and split his skull open like a melon.

His feet slipped with each attempt to gain traction, and for a score of seconds, he could only look on in horror as the skull opened its mouth and spider creatures flooded forth, gushing as well from the vacant eye sockets.

The skull opened: a bloody puzzle box.

A child fell under a club, skull opened and yellow-gray brains spilling to the pavement.

Corbett looked up and tried to rise, the skulls in the cross-beam of the house opened their mouths and bellowed with laughter.

And there was the patient, the anonymous patient, mounted in a slump of a sitting position, head bowed, the skull opened, the face and limbs hidden completely beneath layers and layers of green cotton drapery, except for two naked, helpless feet.

Her skull opened its jaws and grabbed onto a crossbone.

"Being careful not to bang my skull open like you just did," he said, grinning.

Ted Goebel, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University who was not connected to the research, said the skull opened the way to important insights about "the missing years of modern humans."