1.   Inside a purpose built coffin Brian found the ancient skull of a horse.

2.   But the size of that same canal bone reached dimensions similar to those of modern humans in many other ancient skulls that the Duke scientists have measured.

3.   They have probed the human brain and compared it with casts of the braincase from ancient fossil skulls.

4.   Early modern human skulls from Australia had similarities to the more ancient skulls from Indonesia.

5.   In a commentary accompanying the study, George Washington University anthropologist Daniel Lieberman said the discovery of the ancient skull adds to the confusion about the human evolutionary tree.

6.   The victim is under study by a team of Swiss and French scientists, who have used computer imaging to help reconstruct the ancient skull.

7.   These individual groups probably intermingled with archaic humans such as the Neanderthal, said the researchers, who analyzed ancient skulls from around the world.