"In July, four volunteers literally stumbled over some badly weathered bones, and insisted that we start digging."

Her back was as clear-skinned and pale as weathered bone.

The other nodded, and that promise did seem to warm his weathered bones.

The American PBS television series Secrets of the Dead initially identified the body as Eino Viljami Panula, a 13-month old Finnish baby, based on DNA testing of three teeth and a small, weathered bone.

Several pictures flashed through his mind: Lloyd, pacing before his pyramid; the glittering black eyes of the destroyer comandante; the broken, weathered bones of his dead partner.

He knelt, and carefully turning back the ragged canvas, revealed a jumble of weathered bones, a hollow-eyed skull staring up from the midst of them.

Dr. Andrew Merriwether, a physical anthropologist from Britain who attended the meeting, said it was unlikely that DNA could be preserved in weathered bones over such a long period, but he said a tooth, which contains a protected pulp cavity, might contain usable DNA.

He crouched closer to the fire, watching as Legrain fed it with thorned scrub and shards of bleached and weathered bone.

An old and weathered bone was dug up by a farmer and is still preserved in Texcoco-I have seen it-and the surgeons say it is most definitely a thighbone.

Gone were his cheeks and eyes and nose, and his jaws of weathered bone gaped wide, showing missing teeth.