Felipe Solís, a prominent Mexican archaeologist and director of the country’s National Museum of Anthropology, has died of complications from pneumonia. The Ministry of Health has denied initial reports that Solís had contracted swine flu.

Solís was born in 1944 in Mexico City and had worked as an archaeologist for the National Institute for Anthropology and History since 1972. He helped uncover some of the most important archaeological finds in Mexico, including an Aztec aqueduct near Mexico City and the Coyolxauhqui stone, a famous sculpture of a dismembered Aztec goddess discovered at the city’s Templo Mayor in 1978 (right).

More recently, he had helped curate museum exhibitions in Bonn and Chicago. He had over 200 articles published and authored or co-authored 30 books on archaeology, anthropology and history. He died on 23 April as the result of a cardiac arrest caused by “complications from pneumonia,” according to the Ministry of Health.

The Ministry denied initial reports that claimed Solís was a victim of the swine flu outbreak in Mexico City. Those reports gained international attention, in part because Solís had met with US President Barack Obama a week before his death.

Image: Wikipedia