"He was displayed the way you'd see a skeleton in a doctor's office, " says Marie Galbraith, the museum's executive director.

NPR: Hidden Museum Treasures: Fortune's Bones

"One can't be certain, but I suspect that in many cases these kinds of skin impressions have gone unnoticed and people have gone after the skeleton, which is of course what you'd expect to be preserved, " he told BBC News.

BBC: Dinosaur mummy yields its secrets

You'd imagine that man could never quite stamp his mark on the vast desert of the Skeleton Coast.

BBC: Skeletal memories in Namibia