Another human skull in Paphos puzzles police

Another human skull was found in Paphos district over the weekend, with police saying they would conduct DNA test to run the results through the missing person database.

According to local media, a farmer outside Paphos notified authorities on Sunday morning around 10am after finding a human skull outside his property in a rural area, between the villages of Koloni and Marathounta.

The skull was said to belong a human and would be sent to a lab for forensic tests, according to CID Paphos Michalis Nicolaou, who said civil defense volunteers were taking part in a search in the area to look for more evidence.

Nicolaou, who also serves as police spokesperson in the district, pointed to speculation that the skull might have been unearthed by the farmer’s dogs.

The official also said investigators would wait for DNA results and run and then run the profile through a database of missing persons, to determine whether the remains were linked to a missing case.

No information was provided about dating the skull or whether there were any other leads in the investigation.

Anthropologists in the past have been called to help solve puzzles of human skulls, including one found on a Paphos beach in 2018. Another mystery death of a foreign woman who was found in the area resulted to a "dog mauling" trial in which the dog owner was acquited.