Monitored excavation at the UC Davis Cancer Center expansion project has uncovered 28 possible additional sites containing human remains from what is believed to have been an indigent cemetery of the old Sacramento County Hospital.

None of the remains have been removed from the site. UC Davis Medical Center officials submitted a request to Sacramento County Superior Court on April 2 for permission to remove and catalogue the remains, then transport them for internment at St. Mary's Cemetery on 21st Avenue in Sacramento. Once the request is filed, there is a mandatory 15-day waiting period before the court will consider the request.

The digging had stopped temporarily after crews made an initial discovery of bones from two bodies on March 10. After the Sacramento County Coroner's Office estimated that the remains dated from the late 1800s and thus had archeological significance, the medical center hired an archeological consulting firm to monitor further excavation, which resumed last week.

Previously, a forensic anthropologist hired by the coroner's office had determined that the original set of bones uncovered dated from the era of the Sacramento County Hospital Cemetery, and were not those of Native Americans.

When excavation resumed under the monitoring of the archeological consultant, evidence of 28 graves was discovered between March 22 and March 24.

The expansion project is located at the southeast corner of the Cancer Center. The first set of bones discovered on March 10 was located at the northwestern edge of the site. Remains found after monitored excavation proceeded last week were situated toward the southern and eastern portions of the site.

The locations of each body will be plotted on a map of the site for permanent records. Security personnel are at the site 24 hours a day.

Accounts of the indigent cemetery were well-known, but its precise location had been a mystery until the discovery of the bones last month. Last year, working with the Sacramento County Cemetery Advisory committee, the hospital installed a bronze plaque near the water tower at 45th and V streets dedicated to the people buried in the indigent cemetery.