The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology or the Penn Museum said it rediscovered a lost 6,500-year-old human skeleton in a basement storage room.

The museum said the skeleton was originally excavated from the south of Iraq in 1930.

Researchers in the museum were digitizing their collection from an expedition to the ancient city of Ur when they found the documentation for the skeleton.

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William Hafford, project manager in digitizing the collection, was identifying the archeological finds from an inventory list when he found the description for the skeleton, but without the actual remains to match it with.

Hafford went to the chief curator of physical anthropology, Janet Monge, who knew about a mystery skeleton that was in the storage area at the basement of the museum.

The two went to the storage room, found the coffin and matched the skeleton with the descriptions they found and it matched.

Researchers at UPenn said the remains were that of a 5 foot 9 inch tall man about 50 years of age.

It's rare to find human skeletons from the Ubaid period (5500-4000 B.C.) because the land where they bury their dead is not good for preservation, according to Monge.

The researchers called the skeleton "Noah" because of the presence of deep silt in the skeleton, indicating that it lived through a great flood.

UPenn scholars and researchers from the British museum teamed up for the excavation led by Sir Leonard Woolley in 1922.

Half of the archeological objects discovered in the dig were sent to Baghdad and are now in the National Museum of Iraq. The other half was divided between Philadelphia and London.

Hafford and his team are now coordinating with their colleagues in the British museum to digitize their collections.

They also hope their counterparts in Baghdad can do the same, but have not coordinated with the curator in the Iraqi museum yet, Hafford said.

Tagsuniversity of pennsylvania, museum, skeleton