The head had been in the Mercer University natural history collection in Macon, Georgia, and was brought to the US from Ecuador by a now dead faculty member during the Second World War.

“It’s a relief to have the specimen out of our possession,” says Craig D. Byron, a professor of biology at Mercer University and one of the authors of the research paper about its authentication and return, published in the journal Heritage Science. “It had ‘underground’ value; it was illegal to trade or sell; it was the skin from a person’s head; we had no business holding on to this item. It was a rewarding conclusion to a project hanging around since 2015.”