700-year-old sandal discovered in nest of bone-eating vulture: study

They’re culture vultures.

A 700-year-old sandal and several other hand-crafted cultural artifacts were found in the breeding nest of a bone-eating vulture in Spain, according to a newly published paper.

The medieval footwear was discovered by a team of researchers studying the nests of bearded vultures on the cliffs of the southern parts of Spain between 2008 and 2014, according to research published in September in The Scientific Naturalist.

One of the 12 nests surveyed dates back to at least the 13th century and contained several handcrafted objects of similarly shocking vintage.

Most remarkably, they found a “complete sandal made of esparto grass cord” which dates back roughly 700 years.

In that same nest, researchers detected a fragment of “ochre-painted sheep leather” from as far back as 650 years ago.

Another nearby nest had an 18th century basketry fragment, according to the paper.

Researchers also uncovered a number of other handcrafted and very old materials — including a crossbow bolt and its wooden lance, a slingshot, and another piece of fabric believed to be hundreds of years old.

“We knew that the bearded vulture is a transporting species that can carry objects to tis nest for construction, but we were surprised by the number of objects found and their age,” said the study’s lead author Antoni Margalida from the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology at the Spanish National Research Council, CNN reported.

“This means that these sites, used for centuries, are quality locations that different generations have used for breeding.”

Bearded vultures, also called ossifrages, can have wingspans as long as 10-feet and feed mostly on bone matter.

“This study sheds new light, and really a whole new angle on the place of the Bearded Vulture in our understanding of the interplay between a fascinating bird and the history of human culture,” John Fitzpatrick, director emeritus for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, told CNN.