GUATEMALA CITY — The Guatemalan government says archaeologists have found an "extraordinary" Mayan frieze richly decorated with images of gods and governors and a long dedicatory inscription.
A statement issued Wednesday by the government and Mayan archaeologist Francisco Estrada-Belli, who with his team found the structure in the northern Province of Peten, home to other big classic ruin sites.
Estrada-Belli is a professor at Tulane University's Anthropology Department.
The frieze is 8 meters (26 feet) long and 2 meters (6 feet) wide and was found at a Mayan pyramid that dates to A.D. 600. It includes three main characters wearing rich ornaments of quetzal feathers and jade sitting on monsters heads.
In Estrada-Belli's words, the high-relief stucco sculpture is "an extraordinary finding that occurs only once in the lifetime of an archaeologist."