Medieval monks in Easter Ross - and not the tiny island of Iona - may have created the intricately decorated 1,200-year-old Book of Kells, according to researchers. The illuminated manuscript depicting the four Gospels of the Christian New Testament has been described as "the work of angels" due to the complexity of its lettering and illustrations. Its origins are a mystery, but it was thought to have been made on Iona before being taken to Kells in Ireland by monks who survived a Viking attack on the Hebridean isle. But a new project will explore the possibility it was created at a monastery in Portmahomack where there was a workshop turning animal hides into vellum - a fine parchment used for writing on. The workshop, called a parchmenarie, was excavated by archaeologists in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Finds included bone pegs for stretching vellum as it dried, and tools such as knives and pumice stones for scraping and smoothing animal hides.…