At Petra, 'a Discovery of Historic Proportions'

One of the Seven Wonders of the World is still giving up its secrets. In what's being called "a discovery of historic proportions," researchers working around the Treasury monument in Petra, Jordan, have unearthed a tomb containing a dozen skeletons, apparently undisturbed for the past 2,000 years. Also known as Al Khazneh, the monument was handcarved into the sandstone walls of a desert canyon by the semi-nomadic Nabataeans in the first century. Several tombs have been unearthed at the site, which was rediscovered in 1812, but few remained untouched. "The hope was to find a tomb that was intact," Richard Bates, a geophysicist at Scotland's University of St. Andrews, tells NBC News.

Researchers first detected a void in the soil to the right of the monument using ground-penetrating radar. Accompanied by a film crew from Discovery Channel's Expedition Unknown series, they then dug into the void from the side, rather than straight down, "which would have meant cutting through solid rock and damaging part of the building," per NBC. The process revealed a burial containing 12 relatively well-preserved skeletons, as well as artifacts made of bronze, iron, and ceramic, per CNN. One skeleton was holding the top of a broken jug likely dating to the first century BC, Bates says, per NBC.

"This is a hugely rare discovery," says Expedition Unknown host Josh Gates, per CNN. "In the two centuries that Petra has been investigated by archaeologists, nothing like this has been found before." "Since no complete burials [have] ever been found here before, it is likely that we will learn a great deal more about the Nabataean kingdom from this find," says Bates, per NBC. The function of the Treasury building remains unclear. Despite the monument's name, some experts think it was built as the mausoleum of Nabataean King Aretas IV and later became a place of worship. As there are signs of other voids around the monument, Bates says "it is highly likely that there are more [tombs] to be found." You can watch the latest dig unfold on Discovery+. (More discoveries stories.)