LYON, FRANCE—Live Science reports that the remains of at least nine people and thousands of animal bone fragments and horns have been found within a 7,000-year-old stone monument in Saudi Arabia by a team of researchers led by Wael Abu-Azizeh of Lumière University Lyon 2. Many of the animal bones were the heads of cattle and goats, some of which had been burned. More than 1,000 such rectangular monuments, known as mustatils, have been found in Saudi Arabia. This one measures about 131 feet long and 39 feet wide. The surviving walls are more than six feet thick, but it is unclear how tall they might once have been. A possible shrine with two hearths were placed at the center of a courtyard within the mustatil. Researchers think ceremonies involving deposits of animal bones and horns may have occurred in this inner structure. The remains of the people, including two infants, a child, an adolescent, and five adults, were buried several hundred years after the animal bones had been placed in the mustatil. It is unclear at this time if those interred in the monument were related to the people who had built it. For more on mustatils, go to "Around the World: Saudi Arabia."