In 1988, three reputable laboratories in Oxford, Zurich and Tucson carried out radiocarbon tests on the Shroud of Turin and declared it a brilliant, medieval fake produced between 1260 and 1390. Since then startling new evidence has led Professor Christopher Ramsey of the University of Oxford and Head of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit which participated in the original 1988 carbon-14 dating of the Shroud to say, in May 2008: 'There is a lot of other evidence that suggests to many that the shroud is older than the radiocarbon dates allow, and so further research is certainly needed. Only by doing this will people be able to arrive at a coherent history of the shroud which takes into account and explains all of the available scientific and historical information.'