Tree Uprooted by Hurricane Sandy Reveals Human Skeleton

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (TheBlaze/AP) -- New Haven police say superstorm Sandy has revealed a skeleton beneath the town green that may have been there since Colonial times.

Police spokesman David Hartman says a woman who was with other bystanders looking at a fallen oak tree called police Tuesday after she saw bones in the upturned roots.

Hartman says the tree was planted on the green in 1909 on the 100th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's birth. He says the remains likely belong to one of thousands of people buried there in Colonial times. The remains will be evaluated by the state medical examiner. WTNH-TV has more:

Long before the New Haven green was a spot for concerts and gatherings in the elm city, it was a cemetery.

Starting with haphazard burials in shallow graves in the 1650s, until the cemetery was moved to the Grove Street cemetery in 1821.

All of the headstones were moved, but all of the bodies were not.

Historians say there could be more than 1,000 souls still resting under the New Haven green.

Katie Carbo, who called police, tells the New Haven Independent she saw something in the tree roots, and found the bones when she removed some dirt.

"I noticed what I thought was a rock at first, I kind of poked it and a piece came off in my hand, and I noticed it was bone fragments," Carbo told WTNH. "So I took a stick and knocked some of the dirt away and noticed it was an entire skull and body and vertebrae, ribs."

Carbo says the skeleton "should be given a proper burial."