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• George Oliver of Calvert County, Maryland, often walks the beach looking for fossils, NBC News reports.
As he strolled along Chesapeake Bay during low tide, he spotted a coffin in the water.
Inside was a nearly whole human skeleton.
Oliver removed the skeleton and dug the mostly submerged coffin out of the water.
"When I first found it," he said, "you could not tell that there was human remains. You just thought that it was full of beach sand."
Oliver called the sheriff's department, who called an archaeological society.
Based on the construction of the coffin and the condition of the body, it's believed to be at least 100 years old.
Kelcey Ward, a crime scene technician with the sheriff's office, said the skull showed signs of "a gunshot wound or blunt force trauma of some sort."
The remains and coffin will be interred at a local cemetery.