For more than 1,500 years Catholics have made pilgrimage to Rome’s Santi Apostoli Church to venerate two apostles, St. Philip and St. James the Younger – who is said to have been Jesus’ brother.
Bones believed to belong to the martyred saints are enshrined at the basilica, and each encasing bears the name of the saint.
But now archaeologists say skeletal fragments enshrined at the church are too recent to have come from the time of Jesus Christ.
Using radiocarbon dating, a team of researchers from the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and the UK determined a femur purportedly belonging to St. James dates to between 214 and 340 AD.