1,600-Year-Old ‘Posh’ Skeleton With Stone-Encrusted Teeth Found in Mexico

The woman, between 35 and 40 years old when she died, was found near Mexico's ancient ruins of Teotihuacan buried with 19 jars that served as offerings, the National Anthropology and History Institute said. Her head was elongated by being compressed in a "very extreme" way. This technique was commonly used in the southern part of Mesoamerica, but not in the central region where she was found, the institute said in a statement.

Another peculiar feature of the skeleton, dubbed "The Woman of Tlailotlacan" after the neighborhood where it was found, also shows the woman was a "foreigner" in those region. It is the two round pyrite stones encrusted in her top front teeth, a technique used in Mayan regions in southern Mexico and Central America, and a prosthetic lower tooth made of a green stone known as serpentine.