archaeological remains

By crushing these bones and plucking fragments of DNA from the resulting powder, they managed to isolate and reconstruct a genome of an M. leprae strain—the first ever recovered from archaeological remains of a nonhuman animal.

Many of these seemingly otherworldly volcanic fields are adorned with archaeological remains — from small dwellings to colossal animal-corralling structures called kites — that date back millenniums.

Matthew Cuba, the squadron’s cultural resource manager, said the formation of white sand dunes inadvertently buried the site with windblown silt protecting the archaeological remains.

It also sets out procedures for managing any archaeological remains uncovered during construction projects.

There is an eerie otherworldliness to this patch of land, where the curious will find intriguing rectangular outlines of stones like the archaeological remains of tiny castles, and even on a sunny day, the place feels haunted, its rolling hillocks of untrimmed grass and dead leaves punctuated by haphazardly placed gravestones at least a century old.