Discover the first tsunami skull in the world

Scientists discovered the skull of the world's first tsunami victim, a person living in Papua New Guinea 6,000 years ago.

The skull of the tsunami victim 6000 years ago in Papua New Guinea.(Photo: BBC.)

Paul Hossfeld, an Australian geologist, discovered a skull near the town of Aitape in Papua New Guinea in 1929. This skull was originally thought to be Homo erectus, the ancestor of modern humans.

In a study published in PLOS One on October 25, a group of international scientists who discovered the town of Aitape used to be a coastal lagoon devastated by tsunamis 6,000 years ago, and the skull belongs to a person who died in this tsunami.

The team compared sediments in the area where the skull was found with soil from a nearby area affected by the tsunami in 1998. They focused on the particle size and composition of the sediment. The results showed that in the sediment are very small organisms originating from the ocean, similar to the organisms found after the tsunami in 1998 killed more than 2,000 people.

"Although the skull is carefully studied, sediments are less noticeable in previous studies ," said James Goff, the study's lead author at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Geographical similarities in sediments show that people have suffered tsunamis in the Aitape area thousands of years ago. "We conclude that this person died a long time ago, probably the oldest tsunami victim known in the world," Goff said.