Bones of King Richard III confirmed, found 500 years later under parking lot (Video)

A ske­l­e­ton un­earthed last year from under a parking lot has been confirmed as that of Eng­land’s King Rich­ard III, who died in a battle some 500 years ago.

Scientists with the Uni­vers­ity of Leices­ter, U.K. reported Monday that they un­an­i­mously iden­ti­fied the re­mains dis­cov­ered in Leices­ter city cen­ter as be­ing those of the king who died in 1485 after a brief reign.

An ar­ray of ev­i­dence was described as evidence of the confirmation including DNA anal­y­sis, ra­di­o­car­bon dat­ing and skele­tal ex­amina­t­ion, prov­ing the ident­ity of the skel­e­ton found under a parking lot, the site of a medieval church called Grey Friars.

“The in­di­vid­ual ex­humed at Grey Fri­ars in Au­gust 2012 is in­deed King Rich­ard III, the last Plan­tag­e­net King of Eng­land,” said Rich­ard Buck­ley, the lead ar­chae­o­lo­gist on the proj­ect.

Remains believed to be those of King Richard III confirmed, found under a parking lot at the site of Grey Friars church in Leicester, U.K. in August 2012.

Photo credit: 

(University of Leicester)

Richard III reigned from 1483 to 1485 after seiz­ing the throne from his ne­phew Ed­ward V, who was im­pris­oned in the Tow­er of London and mur­dered.

Univers­ity of Leices­ter ge­net­i­cist Turi King said he con­firmed that DNA from the Grey Friars ske­l­e­ton matches that of two of Rich­ard III’s family de­scen­dants, Canadian-born fur­ni­ture mak­er Mi­chael Ib­sen and a sec­ond per­son who wishes to re­main anon­y­mous.

“The DNA se­quence ob­tained from the Grey Fri­ars skele­tal re­mains was com­pared with the two ma­ter­nal line rel­a­tives of Rich­ard III. We were very ex­cit­ed to find that there is a DNA match be­tween the ma­ter­nal DNA from the family of Rich­ard III and the skele­tal re­mains we found at the Grey Fri­ars dig,” King said.

A skele­tal anal­y­sis car­ried out by Uni­vers­ity of Leices­ter os­teo­ar­chae­o­lo­gist Jo Ap­pleby showed the in­di­vid­ual was man in his late 20s or 30s. Rich­ard III was 32 when he was killed at the Bat­tle of Bos­worth in 1485.

The ex­humed man had a slen­der phy­sique and se­vere sco­li­o­sis, a cur­va­ture of the spine, possibly with one shoul­der visibly high­er than the oth­er, sci­en­tists said.

This, they added, is con­sist­ent with de­scrip­tions of Rich­ard III’s ap­pear­ance from the time.

Trau­ma to the ske­l­e­ton in­di­cated that the in­di­vid­ual died af­ter one of two sig­nif­i­cant wounds to the back of the skull, pos­sibly caused by a sword and a hal­berd, ex­perts said. This is con­sist­ent with con­tem­po­rary ac­counts of Rich­ard be­ing killed af­ter re­ceiv­ing a b­low to the back of his head.

The ske­l­e­ton al­so showed a num­ber of non-fatal in­ju­ries to the head, rib and pel­vis, be­lieved to have been caused by a wound through the right but­tock, which sci­en­tists said may have been caused by “hu­milia­t­ion in­ju­ries” af­ter death.

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