Authorities have launched an investigation following the unsettling discovery of what appears to be a human skull by campers in a park near Des Moines, Iowa.
As per The Des Moines Register, campers notified the Polk County Sheriff’s deputies after coming across the skull near a boat ramp at Yellow Banks Park on Friday.
Although no additional potential human remains were found during the subsequent search of the area, detectives and the medical examiner’s office are working diligently to gather more information about the origin and significance of the discovered skull.
Situated approximately 10 miles southeast of Des Moines, Yellow Banks Park spans over 500 acres and features Native American burial mounds and scenic hiking trails.
In light of this incident, it’s worth noting that the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUS) has shared some statistics. Currently, there are 105 open missing persons cases in Iowa, with 13 of them involving unidentified individuals.
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The state has resolved 129 missing person cases, of which 14 pertain to resolved unidentified person cases. On a national scale, there are 23,286 open missing person cases, with 14,448 classified as unidentified individuals.
