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Tag: skeleton

  • Christmas cheer with bone-chilling twist in Florida

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    Most homes decorate for Christmas with lights, wreaths, maybe a few reindeer.But Ron Levine’s house in Cape Coral, Florida? It’s rocking nearly 50 skeletons, some towering up to 12 feet tall. Some say the house looks straight out of a “Nightmare Before Christmas”: Cape Coral edition.There’s a skeleton hot cocoa bar, a “dead gift exchange,” a crew of skeletal construction workers, and some lawn ornaments that even move.”It’s called Cape Skeleton,” said Levine. “It’s a resort for snowbird skeletons, basically. They start showing up in September…There’s a few of them that are here year-round.” Levine used to work with a haunted house in New York, and when he retired to Cape Coral, he brought his spooky talent with him. Levine said it started small, with two skeletons and a dog. But small didn’t last long.“First thing I saw was this lawn,” he said. “And my brain went into overdrive.”Now, the display has become something of a local landmark. Cars honk. Families stop to take pictures. Levine says even police officers slow down to get a look.“We have to take a breath,” Levine jokes. “And if we’re not breathing… we might end up here.”A Christmas hit or a Halloween that won’t die? Some neighbors absolutely adore it.“The elaborate displays, the way he changes it from Halloween to Christmas — I think it’s outstanding,” said neighbor Marcia Dunn. “So many kids stop by and see it. So many people love that he does it.”But others would rather save skeletons for October.“I don’t like it,” said neighbor Joey Guidice. “Right now it’s Christmas. I’d rather see Santa Claus, his elves, not skeletons.”The reason for the holly-jolly boneyard? Levine says, it’s simple.“You’ve got to find that spark of joy sometime in the day,” he said. “That’s what I hope to do. Whether someone’s heading to work or coming home from a bad day.”Whether you think it’s festive, freaky, or fantastically Florida, one thing is certain… You’ll never drive past this house without slowing down.Levine doesn’t have any code violations on record related to his lawn decor. In fact, the city says there’s nothing in its code of ordinances that regulates holiday decorations.”Cape Skeleton” might not be the Christmas tradition you expected, but it’s definitely the one you’ll remember.

    CAPE CORAL, Fla. —

    Most homes decorate for Christmas with lights, wreaths, maybe a few reindeer.

    But Ron Levine’s house in Cape Coral, Florida? It’s rocking nearly 50 skeletons, some towering up to 12 feet tall. Some say the house looks straight out of a “Nightmare Before Christmas”: Cape Coral edition.

    There’s a skeleton hot cocoa bar, a “dead gift exchange,” a crew of skeletal construction workers, and some lawn ornaments that even move.

    “It’s called Cape Skeleton,” said Levine. “It’s a resort for snowbird skeletons, basically. They start showing up in September…There’s a few of them that are here year-round.”

    Levine used to work with a haunted house in New York, and when he retired to Cape Coral, he brought his spooky talent with him.

    Levine said it started small, with two skeletons and a dog. But small didn’t last long.

    “First thing I saw was this lawn,” he said. “And my brain went into overdrive.”

    Now, the display has become something of a local landmark. Cars honk. Families stop to take pictures. Levine says even police officers slow down to get a look.

    “We have to take a breath,” Levine jokes. “And if we’re not breathing… we might end up here.”

    A Christmas hit or a Halloween that won’t die?

    Some neighbors absolutely adore it.

    “The elaborate displays, the way he changes it from Halloween to Christmas — I think it’s outstanding,” said neighbor Marcia Dunn. “So many kids stop by and see it. So many people love that he does it.”

    But others would rather save skeletons for October.

    “I don’t like it,” said neighbor Joey Guidice. “Right now it’s Christmas. I’d rather see Santa Claus, his elves, not skeletons.”

    The reason for the holly-jolly boneyard? Levine says, it’s simple.

    “You’ve got to find that spark of joy sometime in the day,” he said. “That’s what I hope to do. Whether someone’s heading to work or coming home from a bad day.”

    Whether you think it’s festive, freaky, or fantastically Florida, one thing is certain… You’ll never drive past this house without slowing down.

    Levine doesn’t have any code violations on record related to his lawn decor. In fact, the city says there’s nothing in its code of ordinances that regulates holiday decorations.

    “Cape Skeleton” might not be the Christmas tradition you expected, but it’s definitely the one you’ll remember.

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  • Ice age skeleton with broken neck bone provides rare glimpse into the lives of ancient hunter-gatherers

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    A well-preserved human skeleton that scientists recently excavated in Vietnam dates back about 12,000 years ago to the Ice Age and contains the oldest human mitochondrial DNA found in the region. It belonged to a man who died when he was around 35 years old after being pierced in the neck by a projectile with a tip made of quartz that showed signs of human workmanship.But the man didn’t die right away; analysis of his damaged cervical rib bone revealed signs of tissue growth and an infection that likely caused his death, scientists reported Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.Video above: Exploring life for humans, woolly mammoths in the ice ageThe man may have lived for months after being wounded until he died and was buried in a cave site named Thung Binh 1 in what is now Tràng An Landscape Complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.The circumstances of the man’s traumatic injury are unknown, but this case may be the earliest evidence of conflict between hunter-gatherers in mainland Southeast Asia, according to the study. His wound and his survival for some time afterward offer a rare glimpse into the lives of people in this region during the waning days of the Pleistocene era about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago.”Human skeletal material from the Late Pleistocene of Southeast Asia is relatively scarce,” said Hugo Reyes-Centeno, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Kentucky and a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies, in an email. He was not involved in the new research.”We have abundant evidence of interpersonal violence in the Holocene, particularly as populations adopt food-producing economies and societies become more stratified, but fewer examples from the Pleistocene of populations that were presumably practicing a foraging economy,” he added. “This study adds to those rare examples.”‘A major surprise’Researchers found the skeleton, which they dubbed “TBH1,” in December 2017. The skull was shattered and flattened, but most of the pieces appeared to be present — including all of the man’s teeth. The pelvis and vertebrae were also fragmented. Recovery of TBH1’s bony bits, conducted by an international team of collaborators, continued through 2018 due to the extreme fragmentation of the remains and less-than-ideal conditions in the cave, said lead study author Chris Stimpson, a researcher and honorary associate at the University of Oxford’s Museum of Natural History in the UK.”It’s in the subtropics, so there’s a lot of water, a lot of calcium carbonate deposition,” Stimpson told CNN. “That makes the sediment very, very sticky.”Team members removed the skull and skeletal pieces in large blocks of sediment to avoid damaging them further and then spent months piecing them together in the lab. There wasn’t enough collagen in the bones to determine how old they were, but radiocarbon dating of charcoal samples near the burial suggested that the skeleton was 12,000 to 12,500 years old.Skeletal analysis revealed a minor ankle injury, but the man’s overall health was good before the trauma that caused his death. Review of the mitochondrial DNA confirmed that the individual was male and suggested a maternal lineage associated with local hunter-gatherers, descended from humans who were among the earliest to migrate into the region.Since few well-preserved human skeletal remains from this period have been uncovered in Southeast Asia, this near-complete find with its DNA preserved was already significant. Discovering traumatic damage to the man’s cervical rib — an extra bone in the neck that rarely appears in humans — “was a major surprise,” Stimpson said.One more surprise lay in store for the scientists. Near the injured cervical rib was a fragment of opaque quartz measuring 0.7 inch (18.28 millimeters) long and weighing about 0.014 ounce (0.4 gram). It bore carving marks commonly seen in stone tools from the period. But there were no other quartz tools in the cave, making the projectile point potentially an “exotic technology” that originated elsewhere, according to the study.”Given the difference in the tool causing the injury compared to the tools found at the site, the study opens the intriguing possibility of violence between members of different populations,” Reyes-Centeno said. “But further archaeological work at the site and in the region is necessary to fully reconstruct the circumstances of the individual’s death.”Based on the quartz fragment’s shape, scientists interpreted it as the point of a projectile that pierced the man’s neck on the right side and broke his cervical rib, ultimately leading to a fatal infection. The position, size and type of injury hinted at a small but fast-moving object; a larger object would have caused more serious damage, and death probably would have been instantaneous, the study authors reported.While it’s possible that the broken bone represents a violent encounter with an individual who was not local, scientists can only guess at the circumstances that caused the man’s injury and what the final weeks of his life were like. The archaeological record from this time and place preserves little about how hunter-gatherers interacted with each other, but the man’s survival after his injury and his subsequent burial suggest that perhaps he did not suffer and die alone, Stimpson said.”It’s speculative,” he added, “but the fact that he managed to hang on for a couple of months, and the fact that he was buried in the manner and in the place that he was, you can infer that there were folks looking out for him — in life and in death.”

    CNN —

    A well-preserved human skeleton that scientists recently excavated in Vietnam dates back about 12,000 years ago to the Ice Age and contains the oldest human mitochondrial DNA found in the region. It belonged to a man who died when he was around 35 years old after being pierced in the neck by a projectile with a tip made of quartz that showed signs of human workmanship.

    But the man didn’t die right away; analysis of his damaged cervical rib bone revealed signs of tissue growth and an infection that likely caused his death, scientists reported Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

    Video above: Exploring life for humans, woolly mammoths in the ice age

    The man may have lived for months after being wounded until he died and was buried in a cave site named Thung Binh 1 in what is now Tràng An Landscape Complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

    The circumstances of the man’s traumatic injury are unknown, but this case may be the earliest evidence of conflict between hunter-gatherers in mainland Southeast Asia, according to the study. His wound and his survival for some time afterward offer a rare glimpse into the lives of people in this region during the waning days of the Pleistocene era about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago.

    “Human skeletal material from the Late Pleistocene of Southeast Asia is relatively scarce,” said Hugo Reyes-Centeno, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Kentucky and a fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies, in an email. He was not involved in the new research.

    “We have abundant evidence of interpersonal violence in the Holocene, particularly as populations adopt food-producing economies and societies become more stratified, but fewer examples from the Pleistocene of populations that were presumably practicing a foraging economy,” he added. “This study adds to those rare examples.”

    ‘A major surprise’

    Researchers found the skeleton, which they dubbed “TBH1,” in December 2017. The skull was shattered and flattened, but most of the pieces appeared to be present — including all of the man’s teeth. The pelvis and vertebrae were also fragmented. Recovery of TBH1’s bony bits, conducted by an international team of collaborators, continued through 2018 due to the extreme fragmentation of the remains and less-than-ideal conditions in the cave, said lead study author Chris Stimpson, a researcher and honorary associate at the University of Oxford’s Museum of Natural History in the UK.

    “It’s in the subtropics, so there’s a lot of water, a lot of calcium carbonate deposition,” Stimpson told CNN. “That makes the sediment very, very sticky.”

    Team members removed the skull and skeletal pieces in large blocks of sediment to avoid damaging them further and then spent months piecing them together in the lab. There wasn’t enough collagen in the bones to determine how old they were, but radiocarbon dating of charcoal samples near the burial suggested that the skeleton was 12,000 to 12,500 years old.

    Skeletal analysis revealed a minor ankle injury, but the man’s overall health was good before the trauma that caused his death. Review of the mitochondrial DNA confirmed that the individual was male and suggested a maternal lineage associated with local hunter-gatherers, descended from humans who were among the earliest to migrate into the region.

    Since few well-preserved human skeletal remains from this period have been uncovered in Southeast Asia, this near-complete find with its DNA preserved was already significant. Discovering traumatic damage to the man’s cervical rib — an extra bone in the neck that rarely appears in humans — “was a major surprise,” Stimpson said.

    One more surprise lay in store for the scientists. Near the injured cervical rib was a fragment of opaque quartz measuring 0.7 inch (18.28 millimeters) long and weighing about 0.014 ounce (0.4 gram). It bore carving marks commonly seen in stone tools from the period. But there were no other quartz tools in the cave, making the projectile point potentially an “exotic technology” that originated elsewhere, according to the study.

    “Given the difference in the tool causing the injury compared to the tools found at the site, the study opens the intriguing possibility of violence between members of different populations,” Reyes-Centeno said. “But further archaeological work at the site and in the region is necessary to fully reconstruct the circumstances of the individual’s death.”

    Based on the quartz fragment’s shape, scientists interpreted it as the point of a projectile that pierced the man’s neck on the right side and broke his cervical rib, ultimately leading to a fatal infection. The position, size and type of injury hinted at a small but fast-moving object; a larger object would have caused more serious damage, and death probably would have been instantaneous, the study authors reported.

    While it’s possible that the broken bone represents a violent encounter with an individual who was not local, scientists can only guess at the circumstances that caused the man’s injury and what the final weeks of his life were like. The archaeological record from this time and place preserves little about how hunter-gatherers interacted with each other, but the man’s survival after his injury and his subsequent burial suggest that perhaps he did not suffer and die alone, Stimpson said.

    “It’s speculative,” he added, “but the fact that he managed to hang on for a couple of months, and the fact that he was buried in the manner and in the place that he was, you can infer that there were folks looking out for him — in life and in death.”

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  • A skeleton and a smoking gun: Why a newly elected deputy union board member’s tattoo is sparking concern

    A skeleton and a smoking gun: Why a newly elected deputy union board member’s tattoo is sparking concern

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    A union representing Los Angeles County sheriff deputies recently elected to its board of directors a veteran lawman who has a controversial tattoo and was involved in two fatal shootings that cost the county $4 million in legal payouts, sparking concern among oversight officials and justice advocates.

    Incoming Assn. of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs board member Jason Zabala previously described his tattoo under oath, saying it depicted a skeleton in a cowboy hat with a smoking rifle and the number 140. He called the stark combination of imagery a “station tattoo,” but others described it as the symbol of a deputy gang known as the Regulators.

    Zabala has previously denied being part of the group, saying that the number simply meant he was the 140th person to get that same design, and describing the tattoo as a proud mark of camaraderie among fellow deputies. This week he did not respond to a request for comment.

    Union president Richard Pippin defended Zabala in an emailed statement Thursday, calling him a “family oriented guy with a big heart” who has dedicated his life to helping others.

    Still, advocates — such as James Nelson, campaign and program manager for the community coalition Dignity and Power Now — worried Zabala’s election would not bode well for the department’s efforts to rein in deputy gangs and gang tattoos.

    “It’s a bad sign,” Nelson said. “It isn’t the sheriff that runs the department — it’s the unions.”

    For decades, the Sheriff’s Department has been plagued by gangs of deputies running roughshod over certain stations and floors of the jail. The groups are known by monikers such as the Executioners, the Vikings and the Regulators, and their members often bear the same sequentially numbered tattoos.

    During his swearing-in ceremony nearly a year ago, Sheriff Robert Luna spoke of the need to “eliminate deputy gangs” from the department. Though he created a new office to do that, the department has not yet settled on a policy banning gangs or gang tattoos.

    One hurdle to clear before implementing any sweeping new policy is the back-and-forth of the bargaining process with labor leaders, including ALADS.

    “We’ve been hearing that the reason we can’t move forward with passing an anti-gang policy — which is the first step in making good on the pledge to get rid of them — is because the sheriff has to negotiate with ALADS,” said Sean Kennedy, who chairs the Civilian Oversight Commission.

    “Those sessions are taking much longer than we anticipated,” Kennedy said. “And then, when we hear that he’ll be meeting and conferring with an organization with a tattooed Regulator on the board of directors, it makes everyone believe that we’re engaged in a futile process.”

    Pippin disputed that, saying the election outcome “will not change” the organization’s mission and values when it comes to the bargaining process.

    “We remain committed to working with the department and the county to achieve the best possible outcomes, not only for our members, but also for members of the communities they serve,” he said.

    He did not address the nature or significance of Zabala’s tattoo.

    County records show Zabala first started working for the Sheriff’s Department in 2002. Nine years later, he was involved in an on-duty crash that left a woman with spinal injuries. The case settled for $80,000 before trial, according to the news site Knock LA.

    Then in 2013, Zabala and his partner stopped a man riding a bicycle and ended up shooting him as he lay face down in his backyard. Prosecutors said the man — Terry Laffitte — had been resisting, so they deemed the shooting lawful. After Laffitte’s family filed suit, the county settled the case for $1.5 million.

    The year after that, Zabala was involved in the killing of Johnny Martinez, a 28-year-old man with schizophrenia who was shot 36 times by deputies outside his Vermont Knolls home. Prosecutors also deemed that shooting justified, though in 2018 a civil lawsuit on behalf of the Martinez family ended with a hefty $2.5 million settlement.

    It was the 2013 shooting that brought Zabala’s ink to the fore. In connection with the civil lawsuit, Zabala was deposed three times in 2015 and 2016 and asked to describe his tattoo.

    Over the course of those depositions he offered additional details about the ink, including that in addition to a smoking gun, the skeleton is holding a “memorial stone” with “CEN” — for Century Station — written on it, along with the Roman numerals XXI. According to Kennedy, those are all key elements of a Regulators’ tattoo.

    “The tombstone in the background with the letters for Century Station is some of the main iconography for the Regulators,” he told The Times.

    In Zabala’s tattoo, there are also flames along the bottom of the tattoo along with the words “Beati Pacifici,” which he said under oath translates to “Blessed are the Peacemakers.” The entire tattoo is 5 to 6 inches high, on the lower part of his left leg.

    At the time, Zabala said in depositions that the Old West style of his tattoo honored the Sheriff’s Department’s founding in 1850 and that skeletons are “an icon of the peace officer.” A Loyola Marymount University report later described Zabala’s ink as “Regulators tattoo #140.”

    The district attorney’s office later investigated whether Zabala committed perjury when he described the significance of the number 140 on his tattoo.

    Ultimately prosecutors declined to pursue the case, saying it wasn’t clear that Zabala committed perjury. Even if he did lie about his tattoo, they said, it would not have made a difference in the outcome of the case.

    “It is unlikely that a false statement about one aspect of one tattoo, among several, would probably influence the outcome of the wrongful death lawsuit,” prosecutors wrote.

    When lawyers for the county agreed to settle the lawsuit in 2017, records show they told a Sheriff’s Department investigator that the allegation of perjury was a factor in their decision.

    In this year’s union election, Zabala was one of eight candidates for four open seats. He will be sworn in to the seven-member board at Friday morning’s meeting, along with Julian Stern, John Perez and Tony Meraz.

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    Keri Blakinger

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