We found the skeleton as everybody knows. What we want to do in order to try and verify who that
skeleton might be of is that we want to verify that against present day DNA, so assuming that
we can extract DNA from the skeleton, what we want to do is to both look on the male line of
direct descent and the female line of direct descent to match both aspects of the DNA.
We know scientifically that then DNA and different elements of your DNA are passed from
parent to child. Some DNA is inherited from your mother; some DNA is inherited from your father.
So what matters is that what we need to do is to find people within either a completely direct
female descent or a completely direct male descent. You can't mix the two.
Where I come in is to look particularly at the female line because that has already been
fairly well documented and researched by John Ashdown-Hill. But clearly what we want to do,
because this is a scientific project where we're using scientific methods and approaches,
is to absolutely belt and brace that lineage that John Ashdown-Hill has already established.
So what we've done is to look at the line from Anne of York to Michael Ibsen and actually checked
every link of the chain to ensure that we can as best as we can give documentary evidence that
the daughters and the mothers all match up all the way down to Joy Ibsen and eventually to
Michael and we've been very successful in proving that link and I think that's an important part of
the scientific experiment, because there's always a risk that you may have a match between A and B,
but without having evidenced the chain, that might be a spurious link.
Right from the start of the project we decided that
we would not ideally want to rely on just the DNA between Michael and the skeleton.
We always wanted, for scientific reasons, to triangulate that right by ever wherever possible.
So we set about trying to discover another a second maternal line.
And after several weeks of research we actually did discover this person and the documentary
evidence again is there to support this. Having made contact with the individual in question,
they made it absolutely clear that although they were willing to
work with the project and very kindly provided a sample for us to use in the research project,
they don't want to be named and they don't want any publicity, and we will absolutely honour that.
So, the first question is do those two samples match?
Having tested them we were delighted to discover that they not only matched, they were an identical
match in every way. So that we could show that they clearly shared a common female ancestor.
So then the next question is do those two who match one another triangulate with any
maternal DNA that we've extracted from the skeleton?
Ancient DNA is actually quite difficult, both to extract and to test. Rather more complex than
living individuals. But after a lot of work Turi King managed to both extract and then subsequently
test independently in two locations to ensure that there was nothing wrong with the experiment
and was delighted to discover that in fact all three samples triangulate.
Which leads to one conclusion and that is that this indeed is the skeleton of Richard III.
I think we were extremely fortunate to discover the skeleton when we did.
A lot of the work has been underpinned by looking at the female line DNA. Now that we know that the
female DNA is only passed from the mother to her
children, but only daughters can pass it on to their children. It's highly unlikely
that either of those lines will actually pass on the maternal DNA to a further generation.
So it's this present day generation where the maternal line DNA will stop.
Had we discovered the skeleton in 30, 40, 50 years’ time we'd have nothing to test it against.