Bones

Los Angeles County sheriff's homicide detectives were trying to determine whether bones found by hikers Saturday in the Angeles National Forest were human, authorities said. The hikers discovered the remains around 8:40 a.m. about a mile up a trail east of Woodglen and Winterhaven lanes in Altadena, Deputy Tania Plunkett said. A sheriff's cadaver-sniffing dog found more bones, she said.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department investigators found a pile of human bones and a skull Wednesday in an isolated area near Canyon Country. The discovery was made in a canyon off Sand Canyon Road with the help of a male hiker. The hiker found the bones Saturday and reported them, but deputies were unable to locate them, sheriff's spokesman Rick Adams said. The hiker guided deputies to the location Wednesday.

The puzzle for a stranger meeting Basil Rhodes Jr. is what to look at--and what to see. Look at him, and there are these facts: Basil is 13, yet he measures more like an infant. He is 32 inches long and weighs 22 pounds. Look at him some more. A genetic mistake stopped his growth when he had barely started and left every one of his bones as fragile as china. Basil's brittle bones can snap like a twig under the gentle pressure of a sneeze, or a cough, or his mother's caress.

A group of native Hawaiian families today will receive the last of their ancestors' bones at the Smithsonian, which rejected a rival claim by two purported royal priests who threatened spiritual vengeance if they were not awarded the remains. After a private religious ceremony at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, the officially recognized delegation will carry away the 135 skeletal remains in woven ti leaf baskets for burial on the island of Kauai.

By the time you reach 13,000 or so, you'd figure that the people closest to you would know some fundamental personal details -- like your sex. But consider the plight of the oldest person yet found in North America. All that remains of him -- or is it her? -- are a couple of thigh bones, which were discovered on Santa Rosa Island in 1959. At the time, scientists thought they belonged to a man of a certain age -- perhaps 10,000.

A group of hunters discovered a human skull and other bones in a remote part of the woods near Aliso Canyon Road in Acton on Saturday, sheriff's officials said. The age and gender of the remains have yet to be determined, Deputy Bob Killeen said, adding that "the remains are believed to be human." Hunters found the skeletal remains about 2 p.m. in a mountainous and wooded area about four miles east of Soledad Canyon Road, Killeen said.

A study reported last week that people who take anti-depressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) put themselves at greater risk for fractures. Researchers are working to understand how depression and its therapies affect skeleton strength. One thing they know: Several hormones and neurotransmitters affect, to varying degrees, the building and breaking down of bone. --- From the outside, bones look stiff, unyielding, unchanging.

Women who have outwardly normal menstrual periods may lose bone rapidly if they do not ovulate during every monthly cycle, a study concludes. Lack of menstruation, such as occurs in women who exercise strenuously or do not eat enough, has long been associated with weakened bones. But until now, experts assumed that women who menstruated regularly also produced hormones that kept their bones healthy.

Bones found buried at a Canyon Country home were not human remains, coroner's investigators determined Thursday. "After examination, they were confirmed to be nonhuman," county coroner spokesman David Campbell said. Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies discovered the animal bones Wednesday after responding to a call about explosives and shots fired on a property in the 14800 block of Sierra Highway, Deputy David Cervantes said.

Costa Mesa police don't believe that bones found in Indio last February belong to a missing Newport Beach woman, but an anthropologist who studied the remains says there is a strong possibility that they do. Denise Huber, 23, vanished 14 months ago after dropping off a friend at his Huntington Beach home. According to police, the two had just attended a concert in Inglewood. Huber was last seen at about 2 a.m. on June 3, 1991.