Trinity College Dublin to return skulls stolen from Inishbofin

Academics measuring the heads of people on Inishbofin in 1892. It was believed at the time that the islanders were Ireland’s Indigenous people. Photograph: Trinity College Dublin

Trinity College Dublin is to return skulls stolen a century ago from the Irish island of Inishbofin, setting a possible precedent for other controversial human remains and artefacts held by the university.

The institution apologised on Wednesday for keeping the 13 skulls that two academic headhunters had robbed from the ruins of a medieval monastery on the island off the coast of Galway in 1890.