Twenty years since the fortuitous discovery of the Petralona skull, the new Pleistocene find in the Helladic area — the result of a systematic Paleoanthropologic research — was found in a concrete geologic bed in a cave by the sea at Apidema, Mesa Mani.
The location of petrified cranial bones in a recess of the inner side of a coastal cave at Apidema gave the initiative for an intensive Paleoanthropologic research, which started in 1978. Two years later and while detaching other finds, a second skull was brought to light. This skull, found in the same cave recess and next to the first, was in better condition since its side adjacent to the outer surface of the rock was protected by a sediment two to six mm. thick; therefore, its identification as human was much facilitated and beyond doubt.
The extremely difficult cleaning of the human petrification, executed in the laboratories of the National Archaeological Museum, proved that the skufl belongs to an ancestral figure of modern man and is especially important to the Paleoanthropology of Greece. The discharge of the skufl from the various rocky materials covering it, must be credited to the persistent and toilsome efforts of the experienced restorers J. Damigos, D. Komninakidis, T. Magnisalis, and P. Kesaras, who for two months, worked on this project with the help of modern technical devices such as the dental grind.
