It is now believed that the artist who once lived in the house buried them in the garden and forgot about them.

The dolphin bones discovered in a Stirling backyard are far younger than previously believed, and they were probably buried by a 19th-century artist.

Paul McDonald, a resident of Causewayhead, had lately found the bones in clay while working to construct a swimming pool for his kids.

The 10 foot long bones, which were assumed to be the remains of a dolphin that had washed up on the coast of an ancient inland sea that is now the Carse of Stirling, were estimated to be between 6000 and 8000 years old.

It was praised as a "once in a lifetime" discovery by archaeologists.

The skull was then removed and brought to the National Museums of Scotland (NMS) for analysis. But on Thursday, during on-site excavations, the tale of the bones came to light.

Murray Cook, an archaeologist with Stirling Council, said: “The joke is on me. I had thought that the dolphin bones were thousands of years old, making them important on a global scale. But when we started working on the bones last week, we discovered that they had been sawed. The spine has saw marks on it.

It was divided into three distinct pieces. That proved to us that it is unquestionably not archaic. It appears that someone brought it to the backyard garden to have its flesh removed. At this location, in the nineteenth century, Joseph Denovan Adam maintained a studio where he drew from skeletons. Even though the artist typically painted livestock, it's most probable that he buried the dolphin in the garden and then forgot about it.

A National Museum of Scotland crew provided assistance for the excavation effort. They had all they needed to finish the job. They are still overjoyed to have the dolphin skeleton in their possession. Even though it's not tens of thousands of years old, I still feel it to be an astounding discovery. Archaeology is primarily concerned with the process of discovery.”