Remains may be Russian royals

YEKATERINBURG, Russia, Aug. 24 (UPI) -- Archaeologists working near Yekaterinburg, Russia, say they may have discovered the remains of Prince Alexei and Princess Maria.

The research and production center for the protection of monuments of the Sverdlovsk region said Friday that the remains, discovered near the site of the executions of Czar Nicholas II and his family in 1918, may be those of his children, Itar-Tass reported Friday.

"In July 2007, an excavation began on the Staraya Koptyakovskaya road with the purpose of detecting the second cache with the remains of members of the royal Romanov family. As a result of the excavation, double bonfire residues were found in pits with bones of various degrees of preservation and condition, along with bullets, iron nails, angle pieces, and fragments of a ceramic vessel identical to what was found in the main burial site dug open in 1991," center said in a statement.

"An anthropologist has determined that the bones belong to two young individuals -- a young male apparently aged roughly 10-13 and another, a young woman about 18-23," Sergei Pogorelov, deputy head of the archaeological research department at a regional center for the preservation of historical and cultural monuments in Yekaterinburg, told Russian newspaper Pravda.