TIME Paleontology

Chilean Students Discover 7,000-Year-Old Mummy

A group of Chinchorro mummies -dated bet
Claudio Santana —AFP/Getty Images A group of Chinchorro mummies — dated between 5000 B.C. and 3000 B.C. — are on display during the exhibition "Arica, a Thousand-Year-Old Culture," on Aug. 27, 2008, in the cultural center of the La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago, Chile

A group of youths participating in an archaeology workshop dug up an ancient mummy in northern Chile over the weekend

Chilean students participating in an archaeological dig on Saturday near the Peruvian border hit paleontological gold after discovering the remains of a 7,000-year-old Chinchorro mummy.

Officials from the Chilean National Heritage Office were sent to the dig site in Chile’s Morro de Arica to commence a complete investigation into the recovered remains.

A large number of historical artifacts have reportedly been forced to the surface in swaths of the northern parts of the country following a massive 8.2 earthquake that rocked the area in April, according to AFP.

Mummies from the Chinchorro culture are among some of the oldest preserved cadavers to have ever been discovered.

[AFP]

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