When someone admits to a skeleton in their closet, they don't usually mean there's really a skeleton in there.
However, that was the case at a Far North primary school when teachers realised a teaching aide they had long assumed was plastic was in fact a real skeleton.
Totara North School principalBastienne Kruger said no one knew how long the skeleton had been at the school, which opened in 1852.
She was about to use it in a lesson showing the children how the human skeleton fitted together when she saw it was not plastic after all. "When we realised it was real we wanted to do right by this poor person, but we didn't know how - so we phoned the hospital, and they suggested we bring it to the police."
Senior Sergeant Peter Robinson, of Kerikeri police, said the school handed in the bones packed up in a box. Thought to have been acquired many years ago for educational purposes, it comprised a complete skull and one side of a skeleton. Mr Robinson called in staff from the Historic Places Trust, who determined it was not a pre-European skeleton from New Zealand, but most likely from China or India. The Trust's Northland manager, Stuart Park, said the school's main concern was that the bones might have been Maori.
The skeleton's completeness - the box contained all the ribs, hand and foot bones from one side of the body - meant it had not been found or dug up, and the clean, almost polished surfaces suggested the bones had been professionally prepared.
From examining the pelvis it was clearly male and from the fusion of skull bones, an adult. It was, however, a very slightly built adult male, with a jaw shape that was not seen in Maori.
"All those things said it was not koiwi (Maori bones). It is clearly a half skeleton for medical purposes," he said.
Mr Park said the 19th and early 20th centuries saw a considerable trade in skeletons from India and China for medical education, making those countries the most likely origin of the bones.
Ms Kruger said the school had not decided what to do with the skeleton, which now stored by the police.
