Skull

Three weeks after giving birth to a baby girl, 19-year-old Jessica Zeron thought she could care for the newborn on her own. But less than two days after moving out of the home of the baby's grandparents and into her own room at a Woodbury shelter, Zeron apparently became frustrated and threw the infant against a wall because she couldn't quiet her cries, authorities said yesterday. "The baby was crying and she couldn't console her, either by feeding or by some other means," Gloucester County Prosecutor Sean Dalton said.

Last year, while a Penn team of archaeologists was working in Morocco, members uncovered a treasure beyond anything they'd imagined - a skeleton of a child from 108,000 years ago. They don't know what killed him at about age 8, but his remains are believed to be one of the most complete ever found of this period. The skeleton promises to open a window into a pivotal time in human evolution when Neanderthals still ruled Europe, and Africans were inventing art and symbolic thought.

I waded my way through the entries and telephoned the Brainman. He's the only guy I know who knows something about skulls and doesn't live in South Philly. "I need a hand in judging our Name That Skull contest," I said. "It would help if you could be funny. " "I am funnier than just about any dead thing," he replied. Nicholson sent me the skull some weeks ago. There wasn't much to be done with it except make it the centerpiece on my conference table and ask Daily News readers to give it a name.

Grisly autopsy photos of Holly Maddux made the courtroom audience gasp yesterday, but accused killer Ira Einhorn intently stared at the giant image of his former girlfriend's smashed skull projected on a screen at his trial. Einhorn, 62, put on his wire-rimmed glasses to look more closely at the colored images of Maddux's corpse. He raised his arm to point out details to his defense team. And at one point, he turned to his attorney and smiled. "That was a really inappropriate reaction," Maddux's sister Meg Wakeman later angrily told reporters.

WITCH DOCTOR FINDS ANCESTOR'S SKULL IN SCOTLAND A South African witch doctor said yesterday that he had found the skull of his ancestor, an African king, in a forest in the highlands of Scotland. Chief Nicholas Gcaleka arrived in Scotland earlier in the week in his quest for the missing skull of his great-great-uncle, King Hintsa. He says that King Hintsa was shot to death by a British soldier 160 years ago during the Cape Colony Wars and that his head was taken back to Scotland as a trophy.

RIO DE JANEIRO - A 24-year-old construction worker survived after a 6-foot metal bar fell from above and pierced his head, doctors said Friday. Luiz Alexandre Essinger, chief of staff at Rio de Janeiro's Miguel Couto Hospital, said doctors successfully withdrew the iron bar from Eduardo Leite's skull during a five-hour surgery. "He was taken to the operating room, his skull was opened, they examined the brain and the surgeon decided to pull the metal bar out from the front in the same direction it entered the brain.

The remains of a woman found in Burlington County last year revealed little about her life - or death. Officials hope an emerging portrait of what she may have looked like could generate new leads. This week, officials released a sketch that puts a face on the body found by two motorcyclists riding trails in a wooded section of Pemberton Township last summer. After months passed with no significant clues to who she was or how and when she died, forensic experts created what they think she looked like, giving her brown eyes, brown hair, and common features.

Janet Christopher, whose testimony helped convict her former husband of repeatedly beating the couple's baby daughter, was sentenced to 15 years in prison yesterday. She pleaded guilty last month to two counts of aggravated assault and one count of endangering the welfare of a child. Under the terms of the sentencing by Superior Court Judge D. Donald Palese, Christopher, 24, must serve at least five years in prison before she is eligible for parole. The sentence is concurrent with a 11- to 16-year sentence she already had received in Massachusetts for beating Laura, now 4. After yesterday's sentencing, Prosecutor Samuel Asbell praised Christopher as an "integral and effective part of the state's case" against her former husband, Roger Lazarovich.

A Center City shooting last night left an 18-year-old man in guarded condition with a bullet lodged between his scalp and skull, police said. Harold Roberts of 11th Street near Huntingdon was shot shortly after 7:30 p.m. outside a shoe store on the north side of Market Street near 13th by one of a gang of youths after a brief argument, police said. Luckily, Dr. Miguel Cortes, who was helping round up homeless people to take them to shelters, arrived shortly after police did. Cortes plugged the head wound with a finger while dialing Hahnemann University Hospital with his free hand to alert the trauma unit.