And you thought this was all settled - apparently not:

A leading expert on the shroud of Turin has won the support of an Oxford University laboratory for new carbon dating tests on the venerated but controversial relic, which was dismissed two decades ago as a fake.

Carbon dating tests carried out in 1988 indicated that the shroud, long revered as the winding-sheet in which the body of Jesus was wrapped for burial and bearing his imprint, had been made between 1260 and 1390.

The Catholic church admitted at the time that the shroud could not be authentic.

John Jackson, a physicist at Colorado University and a prominent expert on the relic, has argued that the tests were skewed by 1,300 years because of high levels of carbon monoxide. He said many other elements of the shroud, including details of the image, indicate that it is much more ancient.

Jackson will now work with the Oxford University lab to reassess the age of the relic. However, for now he'll have to work theoretically, because a Catholic spokesman has said that any tests will have to wait until after it is put on public display in 2010 - if the Vatican agrees at all to the new testing.