Pliny the Elder’s skull — or more accurately, his alleged skull — reposes in ghoulish splendor at the Museo Storico Nazionale Dell’Arte Sanitaria in Rome, a treasure trove of medical curiosities. The cranium has ruminated for decades in a display case, amid pathological and anatomical anomalies such as malformed fetuses and pickled liver stones. Scholars have long debated whether the relic once housed the brain of Pliny, the renowned admiral and author of a vast encyclopedia of Roman knowledge who died during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.

Over the last few years a pool of Italian biologists, anthropologists and geochemists conducted a series of forensic tests on the skull and accompanying lower mandible, which were unearthed 120 years ago on a shore not far from Pompeii. On Jan. 23 the scientists presented their findings at a conference in the museum. The skull, they concluded, squared with what was known about Pliny at his death, but the jawbone belonged to someone else.

Mary Beard, the Cambridge University classicist and reigning authority on Roman history, dismissed the finding out of hand. “I am 90 percent certain that this is fake news,” she wrote in an email. Andrea Cionci, point man for the undertaking, conceded some ambiguity but remained firm.

“It is very likely that the skull is Pliny, but we cannot have 100 percent security,” he said. “We have many coincidences in favor, and no contrary data.”