Janet Jalil

Our science correspondent Pallab Ghosh visited the site.

It's been pushed back because of a genetic analysis of a jawbone, long thought to have come from a wolf, but now shown to be one of the first dogs, living closely with humans here 15,000 years ago.

Now to another historic discovery.

You may think that d'Artagnan is just a fictional character in The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas' tale of dashing French soldiers in the court of Louis XIV.

But there was a real-life d'Artagnan who was the inspiration for the hero of the novel that has entranced generations of readers and spawned dozens of movies and TV shows.

For more than 350 years, his final resting place has remained a mystery.

Now archaeologists who have spent decades searching for his grave think that they've found it under the collapsed floor of a church in the Netherlands.

Chantal Hartel has the story.

The story of the swashbuckling French soldier D'Artagnan, as told in one of the many stage adaptations of The Three Musketeers.

D'Artagnan, whose real name was Charles de Batz de Castelmour, was the right-hand man to France's most flamboyant king, Louis XIV, trusted with matters of espionage, secret missions and personal protection.

He died in battle in 1673 during the French siege of Maastricht in the Netherlands.

His body was rumoured to have been buried in a church in the Dutch city, but there was no record of a burial in the church archives and no evidence had emerged until last month when part of the church floor collapsed, revealing a skeleton.

The deacon Jos Valk called an archaeologist and says there was a moment of silence when they saw the first bone properly.

We had a few tiles that were loose and we wanted to repair them.

And when we took them out, we found a wall in the ground.

So that was interesting.

And we cleaned the wall a bit and then we found bones.

Vogue says he is 99% certain that these are the remains of d'Artagnan.

Not only were bones found under the floor, but a musket bullet at chest level and a French coin from 1660.

And he says the location of the grave, right beneath where the altar used to be, is also significant, as only royalty or other important figures would have been buried there at the time.