Railway excavation may have found lost graves "death star" in London

London (Reuters)-archeologists said Friday they had discovered a lost burial ground during excavations for a new massive railway project in London which may contain the bodies of about 50,000 people who were killed by the plague "death star" more than 650 years ago.

Thirteen skeletons, arranged in two rows, were found 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) below the road in the area of central London Farringdon by researchers working on the project of Crossrail 16 billion pound ($ 24 billion).

Historical records had indicated the area, described as a "no man's land", once hosted a hastily established cemetery for victims of the bubonic plague which killed about a third of the population of England after its outbreak in 1348.

"At this early stage, depth of burial, pottery found with the skeletons and the way that the skeletons were set out, all this part of the 14th century burial ground emergency," said Jay Carver, lead archaeologist of Crossrail.

Limited records suggest up to 50,000 victims were buried in less than three years in the Farringdon cemetery, as the plague devastated the capital.

Archaeologists hope that the skeletons, which were taken by scientific evidence, will shed light on the DNA signature of the plague and confirm the dates of burials.

Find the cemetery would be the second major discovery in medieval England recently, after which archaeologists have confirmed last month that it had discovered the remains of King Richard III, who died in battle in 1485, under a car park in Central England.

Construction works for Crossrail, a new rail link to Central London and Europe's biggest infrastructure project, have already discovered over 300 skeletons burials in a cemetery near the site of the infamous Bedlam hospital psychiatric London in the heart of the city of London.

(Reported by Michael Holden; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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