LONDON -- Workers digging a new railway line in London have
uncovered what they believe is a burial ground containing
victims of the Black Death -- a plague that wiped out as much as
half of London's inhabitants when it swept the city in the
mid-14th century. Workers involved in the Crossrail project
located 13 skeletons lying in two carefully laid out rows on the
edge of historic Charterhouse Square, an area where historical
records suggest a burial ground was located. Project
archaeologist Jay Carver said scientists will study the bones to
establish cause of death, and hope to map the DNA signature of
the plague bacteria. "This is a pretty rare find within London,"
Carver said Friday. It is the latest in a string of unusual
discoveries that have been a byproduct of the Crossrail project,
which has also uncovered amber that is 55 million years old,
bison and mammoth bones 68,000 years old, the remains of a large
manor house surrounded by a moat dating to the 1500s and remains
from Roman times. At a time long