Fate Of Old Bones Put On Hold

The fate of a 9,200-year-old skeleton was put on hold Wednesday as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reviews claims on the remains.

U.S. District Magistrate Judge John Jelderks refused to issue a temporary restraining order filed on behalf of eight scientists who are trying to stop Indian tribes from burying the bones.

However, Jelderks ordered the Corps to give the anthropologists’ attorneys 14 days notice before the remains are turned over.

The remains - possibly the oldest complete skeleton found in the Northwest - were discovered in July by two men wading in the Columbia River in a Kennewick park about 200 miles southeast of Seattle.

The agency intended to return the bones to the tribes under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990.

Dutch Meier, spokesman for the Corps of Engineers’ Walla Walla district, refused to identify the additional groups laying claim to the remains citing privacy issues.

Paula Barran, an attorney representing the scientists, argued that the remains, known as the “Richland Man,” date back so far that they don’t fall under the federal guidelines for the repatriation act.

She told the judge that Congress “didn’t have Richland Man in mind when they wrote this statue.”