The skeletons of more than 70 Roman soldiers and their families have been found under a hotel swimming pool in England.
Workers were stunned to dig up the bones at the former Newington Hotel in York.
Developer John Reeves said: “The skeletons were found under the old swimming pool, in what was an extension to the Roman burial ground.”
The site is adjacent to a known Roman burial ground
A spokesman for York Archaeological Trust said graves of 30 decapitated Romans had been found nearby in 2004.
The same spokesman further explained: "The property is adjacent to a cemetery excavated by L P Wenham in the 1950s – one of the first Romano-British burial grounds to be fully published in this country."
The swimming pool of the now-defunct Newington Hotel had a grisly secret hiding underneath it
He also said the cemetery was "demographically diverse", and included "men and women, and individuals of all ages from infants to elderly adults – although they seem to have been broadly of the same social class".
The objects found within the graves included "a jet pin", while another body had been buried wearing copper alloy headgear whose flaky, corroded remains had left a green stain on their forehead.