Some boys dream of one day owning a race car when they grow up, or perhaps a Fender Stratocaster guitar.
Ryan Matthew, one of the stars of the Science Channel series Oddities, had a slightly odder wish: He wanted to own an elongated Peruvian skull.
"They used to put boards on babies' heads to make them stick up like a conehead. I'm fascinated by them," he told HuffPost Weird News back in December before the premiere of the show's first season.
Back then, his dream of owning such a rare artifact -- which many people have misinterpreted as being of extraterrestrial origin -- seemed a pipe dream.
But dreams do sometimes come true and, recently, Matthew found his elongated Peruvian skull he's wanted all his life and brought it to the HuffPost Weird News studios to show off like a proud papa.
"I was looking for a [severely enlongated skull]," Matthew told HuffPost Weird News. "I had a couple in my collection, but they're not as flattened as this one."
Matthew says the process of elongating a skull usually began in childhood.
"When you were a newborn baby, you would be cradle-boarded," he explained. "They would put two boards around the head and wrap it very securely. Because the head of a child is very soft, it can be manipulated forward, but the process would take several months."
Matthew and his Oddities co-stars, Evan Michelson and Mike Zohn, will have some extra time to look for more elongated Peruvian skulls and other strange items for their New York-based shop, Obscura Antiques And Oddities, because the show has its mid-season finale on March 10.