doubt that Mitchell –Hedges actually placed the skull in the temple for her to find. Anna still
often displays the skull on frequent ‘final’ tours and she now lives in Canada.
The Mitchell-Hedges skull is made of clear quartz crystal. Both cranium and mandible are
perfectly proportioned and are believed to have been fashioned from the same solid piece of
crystal. It weighs 11.7 pounds and is about five inches high, five inches wide, and seven inches
long. Except for some very slight anomalies in the temples and cheekbones, it is an anatomically
perfect replica of a human skull. Because of its small size and other characteristics, it is thought
to bear a closer resemblance to a female skull than a males’, which has led many to refer to the
Mitchell-Hedges skull as a "she."
In 1970, the Mitchell-Hedges family loaned the skull to the Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in
Santa Clara, California for extensive study. HP is a computer equipment manufacturer and a
leading facility for crystal research. The studies were conducted by an Art restorer named Frank
Dorland who oversaw the testing procedures and the HP examinations yielded some quite
remarkable results. Researchers discovered that the skull had actually been cleverly carved
against the natural axis of the crystal. To explain: The axis or orientation of a crystal's molecular
symmetry is an important aspect of crystal cutting and is something that is always taken into
account by modern crystal sculptors, because if they carve against the natural axis the piece will
usually shatter. This is true even when using lasers and other high-tech cutting methods and yet
this skull is cut against the natural axis. Then, to exacerbate the issue of the object even further,
the HP tests could find no trace of microscopic scratches on the surface of the crystal either. Such
microscopic signs would be a welcome indication that it had been carved with metal instruments
or other tools.
Fig.47 Fig.48
Finally, after a series of exhaustive tests and microscopic examinations, Dorland's best possible
hypothesis for the skull's construction was that it had been roughly hewn out using something like
diamonds and then the detail and clean up work would have been very meticulously done using a
gentle solution of silicon sand and water. But assuming that it could really have been done that
way at all, which is the only possible way that anyone can think of, the entire somewhat
exhausting job would have then required the combined and devoted services of an extremely
gifted group of sculptures, working in shifts and required a labor of continuous man-hours
totaling about 300 years to complete. Under these circumstances, experts believe that successfully
crafting a shape as complex as the Mitchell-Hedges skull by hand is quite frankly, impossible; as
one HP researcher is said to have remarked, "The damned thing just simply shouldn't exist!"