In a case that left doctors speechless, a 73-year-old woman from Algeria was found to have been carrying a calcified fetus — known as a “stone baby” — for more than three decades.

When doctors performed a scan, they discovered the remains of a fetus that had died during pregnancy, which over time became encased in calcium, preserving it like stone. This phenomenon, called lithopedion, happens when a fetus dies during an abdominal (outside the uterus) pregnancy and can’t be reabsorbed by the body.

Only a few hundred such cases have ever been recorded in medical history. The woman reportedly had no idea she was carrying it all those years — a silent secret her body had hidden for decades.