(CNN) The diver wiggled a hand over the debris, watching with anticipation as the sediment of the seafloor scattered. And as the water cleared, what was revealed was unmistakable -- human remains.

Off the coast of the isolated Mediterranean island of Antikythera in Greece lies one of the largest and most puzzling shipwrecks in history . But now the sea may finally be ready to reveal its secrets.

A team of international archaeologists from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have recovered a partial skeleton -- believed to be from a male in his early 20s -- from its watery gravesite about 50 meters (165 feet) below the surface. And researchers hope it could shed light on what caused the ship to sink off of the jagged coastline more than 2,000 years ago.

"It was the first dive on the first day, within three minutes of hitting the bottom and a couple of hand swipes to move away the sediment, long bones appeared and then the skull. It was pretty exciting," Brendan Foley, a marine archaeologist with WHOI and co-director of the expedition, tells CNN.

A treasure trove from antiquity

Skeletal remains in situ on the Antikythera shipwreck.

The excavations have yielded a partial skull, including a jaw and three teeth, two arm bones, multiple rib fragments and two femurs.

Foley says that the bones were located on August 31 during the team's second expedition of the season. Archaeologists were already jubilant following a successful exploration in May , which saw the team return with spectacular treasures that included a bronze spear, gold jewelry and glassware.

"The theme here is that steady labor at the site over the last four years has now gotten us to the point where almost every dive is delivering something that is just jaw-dropping," he says with excitement in his voice.

"We are getting these glimpses back to one of the most interesting periods in human history. This moment when the Roman Republic is switching over to the Roman Empire -- really one of the first periods of globalization."

Will DNA reveal secrets of the deep?

Foley affectionately refers to the remains as Pamphilos, a Greek name which translates to "friend to everyone." The moniker comes from a drinking vessel with the same name etched across the rim previously recovered by famed underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau in 1976.

With painstaking care, the team disinterred the latest skeletal remains and brought them back to the surface, where Hannes Schroeder, an expert in ancient DNA from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, had been drafted to evaluate whether there is the potential for DNA extraction.

If viable DNA does exist, Schroeder believes this could point toward some of the answers archaeologists are searching for about the mysterious voyage.

"This is where the DNA can provide some information, because sexing based on the DNA is fairly straightforward," Schroeder tells CNN.

"We could look at the individual's genetic ancestry... and that will tell us something about his or her origins (and) this could be interesting because we know next to nothing about the crew, about the voyage, what kind of people were on the ship. It will give us a little bit of an insight into who were on board the ship that traded across the Mediterranean 2,000 years ago."

Schroeder says preliminary analysis of the teeth, which appear to be in relatively pristine condition with little wear and a robust femur bone, indicates the remains could be from a young man in around 20 years old. He adds that while the femurs, for example, are unlikely to have viable DNA, hope lies in the petrous bone -- a hard section of the skull located behind the ear. He says this is the most likely area to locate DNA, if it still exists.

"(The bones) looked surprising well-preserved for being 2,000 years old and at the bottom of the sea. It's a very rare thing to find something like this."

"That (area) has been shown repeatedly to preserve DNA area than any other skeletal element," says Hannes Schroeder, an expert in ancient DNA extraction.

The enduring mystery of Antikythera

Little is definitively known about the ship and its ill-fated passengers, but archaeologists believe it sank rapidly in catastrophic circumstances in the first century BC.

It remained undiscovered until sponge divers from the Greek island of Symi sought refuge from a brutal storm, anchoring along the eastern coastline of Antikythera. But it was the 1902 recovery of a clump of calcified stone with mysterious inscriptions that would push the wreck into archaeological lore.

Subsequent archaeological expeditions have returned with a plethora of incredible treasures -- including the famed Antikythera mechanism -- considered by many to be the world's earliest known "computer."

Cousteau led a 1976 expedition, when his team hauled even more artifacts -- including bones believed to be from four individuals -- to the surface. After this, operations at the site ceased for nearly 40 years until Foley and his team reinvigorated the search for answers in 2014.

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'The clock is ticking'

Now Schroder finds himself in an accidental race against time. Since the bones were removed from the seabed, any viable DNA that may exist will have started to degrade faster due to the change in environment. But a sample extraction must wait until permission is granted by Greek authorities.

"The clock is ticking. That DNA is certainly degrading so it's a race," says Foley, who is working with his Greek counterpart Theotokis Theodoulou to get the green light from officials for sample extraction.

"I'm confident that the permits will be issued and the samples will be in Hannes (Schroder's) hands soon. With any luck he'll have initial screening done by the end of October, maybe some of the deeper screening done by the end of the year."

'There's going to be more'

Meanwhile, Foley believes there are more remains waiting to be recovered from the azure waters off Antikythera.

"I bet you there is going to be more. The area where we were excavating, which we are fairly certain is the stern of the ship where the galley was, is probably where crew and passenger compartments were located. So if that's truly the case we're going to get personal possessions (and) we'll probably get more human remains."

Photos: Solving the mystery of the 2,100-year-old shipwreck Photos: Solving the mystery of the 2,100-year-old shipwreck Ancient shipwreck reveals its secrets – After spending the last month at the historic wreck site, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) announced that an international team of archaeologists had recovered new items from the Antikythera wreck. Pictured, Greek technical diver Alexandros Sotiriou discovers an intact "lagynos" ceramic table jug and a bronze rigging ring. The new items have indicated the wreck site is much bigger than previously believed, scattered across 300 meters of seafloor. Hide Caption 1 of 12 Photos: Solving the mystery of the 2,100-year-old shipwreck Solving the mystery of the 2,100-year-old shipwreck – "Return to Antikythera" project chief diver Philip Short is pictured inspecting the magnificent two-meter-long bronze spear reclaimed from the shipwreck, which archaeologists say was once part of a life-size warrior statue. Hide Caption 2 of 12 Photos: Solving the mystery of the 2,100-year-old shipwreck Iron Man-like diving suit involved in hunt – WHOI diving safety officer Edward O'Brien "spacewalks" in the next-gen atmospheric "Exosuit," during the 2014 Return to Antikythera project, which ran from September 15 to October 7. The divers are planning to return to the Antikythera next year to continue excavating the site following a successful first season. Hide Caption 3 of 12 Photos: Solving the mystery of the 2,100-year-old shipwreck The Antikythera Mechanism – In 1900, Greek sponge divers inadvertently stumbled upon an incredible ancient shipwreck off the coast of Antikythera. More intriguing were the heavily corroded bronze fragments -- 82 in total, with the largest pictured -- brought to the surface in 1902. The find would stun the world when it was revealed to be a mechanical computer from the 1st century BC. Hide Caption 4 of 12 Photos: Solving the mystery of the 2,100-year-old shipwreck A computer from the 1st-century BC – At first, the Antikythera Mechanism, as it became known, confounded archaeologists who were unsure if it was an astrolabe or an ancient astronomical clock. Today, it is widely believed the mechanism was a complex computer tracking the astronomical calendar and lunar movements, with its manufacture dated to around 100 BC. Radiographic image analysis on the mechanism revealed 30 intricate gear wheels. Hide Caption 5 of 12 Photos: Solving the mystery of the 2,100-year-old shipwreck Reconstructed in all its glory – A reconstruction of the device now sits at the Archaeological Museum in Athens. Built out of a thin bronze sheet, the mechanism has the first known set of scientific dials and scales. Surrounded by Greek inscriptions, the large upper dial follows the Metonic cycle -- a period of 19 years in which there are 235 lunations. Useful for regulating calendars, there was also a four-year dial for monitoring when the well-loved Panhellenic games -- including the ancient Olympics -- should take place. Hide Caption 6 of 12 Photos: Solving the mystery of the 2,100-year-old shipwreck Could there be another one down there? – "The Antikythera Mechanism is just mind blowing. It's maybe the most important, certainly most surprising, artifact recovered from an archaeology site anywhere," said expedition co-director Brendan Foley. "Our question is: if this ship is carrying this kind of stuff, what else is still down there? You can't even guess. The Antikythera Mechanism had no precedence. Could there be other things of that sort of culture, and technological and scientific significance still down there?" Hide Caption 7 of 12 Photos: Solving the mystery of the 2,100-year-old shipwreck On the hunt for more – Archaeologists are also translating findings from the reports from 1900 and 1901 operations from Ancient Greek hoping to reveal more clues to the initial find. Foley said one of the journals revealed there were two main areas where it was reported marble and bronze lay, so technical divers will be carrying metal detectors to aid their search. He added: "If we get a really big metal detection hit in one localized area then obviously that would be a place to test trench and see what's down there. Maybe there's another mechanism ..." Hide Caption 8 of 12 Photos: Solving the mystery of the 2,100-year-old shipwreck Recovering lost artifacts – Scientists, technical divers, archaeologists and documentary filmmakers made up the 32-person team returning to the wreck site in September for the first ever scientific excavation. Three years in the making, the experts hoped to answer some of the enigmatic questions surrounding the ship, including how big it is, why it was there, where it came from and who might have been traveling on it. Considering all the treasure and female trinkets that have been brought up from the seafloor, one idea is that the ship was transporting a young woman and her dowry but they never made it to their final destination. Hide Caption 9 of 12 Photos: Solving the mystery of the 2,100-year-old shipwreck Treasures across the seafloor – Foley said: "It's actually a treasure ship and there are just no two ways about it. There are 36, 38 statues of marble and bronze, gold jewelry, very high quality glass artifacts that came from the East Mediterranean. Just the highest quality stuff that was available in the first and second centuries BC." Pictured, technical diver Phillip Short inspects an amphora on a previous reconnaissance dive. Hide Caption 10 of 12 Photos: Solving the mystery of the 2,100-year-old shipwreck Anchors away! – Greek archaeologist and fellow co-director of the dive, Theotokis Theodoulou inspects the 400-pound lead anchor stock of Antikythera Wreck B, found last year at one end of the debris field during a preparatory dive. The other end of the wreck is signaled over 50 meters away by roof tiles believed to be from the galley structure at the stern of the ship. Based on this evidence, scientists estimate the vessel to be one of the largest ships from antiquity, making it bigger than some of the most colossal boats known from that time -- Caligula's pleasure barges on Italy's Lake Nemi. Hide Caption 11 of 12 Photos: Solving the mystery of the 2,100-year-old shipwreck Exosuit at work – The team used next-generation diving apparatus, the "Exosuit." It was designed and created by underwater tech pioneer Phil Nuytten of Canada's Nuytco Research. "You can literally operate Exosuit after a few hours of training. The majority of the training is spent in emergency drills. But the actual functioning of it is as simple as learning to drive a golf cart," said Nuytten. Hide Caption 12 of 12

But further excavations will have to wait until next year's archaeological season. In the meantime, archaeologists will work to analyze their latest finds and once samples have been taken, Foley hopes a full 3D reconstruction of the skull can begin.

"As soon as we went to lift the skull out of the sediment, it fell into all these pieces but we very carefully reassembled it ... so I'm optimistic that the conservators will be able to place the pieces back together," he says. "I would like to get a 3D model of the skull... then we could all look into the face of Pamphilos."