We didn't begin this project expecting to find the correct body - we didn't even know whether
we would be able to tell if we did find it. We had to find essentially the right two square
metres of the site and the chances of us doing that were very, very slim. So when we started
to find indications that we might be digging in the right place - and that we were finding
somebody with all of the characteristics that we could hope to look for - it was very, very
exciting and the team I think were overwhelmed, incredibly surprised and really quite shocked.
Once Jo and I got the remains back to the lab, the work actually divides into two different
routes. So Jo needs to go off and have a look at the bones and what I needed to do was to take
samples to be able to extract ancient DNA from. The skeletal remains were actually in extremely
good condition. Now it doesn't necessarily guarantee that you'll be able to get
ancient DNA out of them, because it completely depends on the soil conditions.
So what we did was we brought the remains back to the archaeology department and then what I
did was I was very carefully extracting teeth from the mandible, from which I would try and get DNA.
Because DNA is essentially protected within the interior of the tooth, it's got a hard
outer coating and it's not in direct contact with the outside world - so that means that
it's a very good site for us to target. I also wanted to get another sample from a
different part of the body and if you're going to be able to get DNA the femur
is probably the next best bit to go for. When we come across a skeleton that we want to
establish an identity for, what we have to start off by doing is building up a biological profile
of that individual. So we need to know what sex they were, we need to know their age at death
and we need to know about any other identifiable physical characteristics.
Interestingly the skeleton itself was very slender for a male. Generally speaking male skeletons are
more robust than female skeletons - this skeleton had bones that almost were more like the female
range of variation than like the male. And this is interesting when we look at the historical
sources about Richard III, because they do talk about him being unusually slender in his build.
The position of the spine in the grave was interesting. There was a very noticeable
curve in it and that's not something that can occur just by accident - that's not
something that can happen just by squashing the skeleton into the grave. We could tell
from the position of the various bones that there had been no movement in those bones after death,
so they were still in exactly the correct anatomical position and that gave us a very
good idea of the nature of the curve in the spine. Interestingly we can also see evidence from the
vertebrae themselves. The vertebrae in the area of the spine that was affected by the scoliosis are
quite abnormal in appearance and they have various different features that would all have combined
to create the scoliosis as we saw it. So we have two scales of evidence if you like - we
have the evidence of the whole spine in the ground which we can see the curve on
and we also have the evidence of the individual abnormal vertebrae, and those build up to give
us a picture of what the scoliosis was like. Getting DNA out of ancient remains is a very
tricky and long-winded process. First of all you never know whether or not you're actually going
to be able to get DNA out at all, it really does depend on the conditions of the burial - what the
soil is like and this sort of thing. So what you do is you grind up the sample into a powder and
you put that powder into a tube. But whilst you're running all of this, what you also do is you run
two blank tubes either side of that. And what you're hoping is that at the end of this process
when you're looking for DNA out of the extractions out of these tubes, is that you only get DNA out
of the one that had the tooth powder in and not out of the blanks - and that's exactly
what happened. We found the blanks were empty and the only DNA we had came from the tooth.
When we excavated the skeleton, we had seen two injuries potentially on the head. We didn't
know a lot about the characteristics of those injuries and we wanted to learn more about them,
but we also had a very good look at the skeleton to identify any further injuries on it. When we
did that it became clear that the skeleton had suffered from quite a number of traumas
in the period around death, so there was no healing on any of these.
We found firstly a series of small, very shallow wounds on the skull
which appear to be consistent with a sharp blade - just touching the skull as it came through,
so perhaps a blow that had not quite hit home and those had taken off small parts of the skull bone.
We also had a closer look at the two injuries that we had identified in the ground. The one
to the top of the head had an appearance that was perhaps consistent with something along the
lines of a dagger, or perhaps the end of a sword pommel being hit into the head with some force.
None of these injuries that I've discussed so far would have been fatal.
The slice on the back of the head is probably a different matter.
It's a large injury, it's clearly been inflicted with a sharp blade,
it's taken off a large area of the skull and this is probably something that would have
caused death. It might not have been absolutely instant, but it would have caused him to die.
We noticed a further two injuries on the skull itself. One of those was in the area of the
right cheek, where there was a small rectangular perforation in the bone. And in a similar vein
there is a cut mark on the mandible on the jaw bone, which again doesn't seem to have had a huge
amount of force behind it. So there's a question about whether this was a blow that didn't really
hit home, or again whether this was one that could have happened immediately after death.
We found a further two injuries on the skeleton that were not on the skull. And the first of
those was on one of the right ribs and again it was a cut mark. And then there was an injury
on the pelvis, so that's the area of the hip bones and what's actually happened there is that a sharp
blade has come through the pelvis from the back to the front. So it's, again it's a very unpleasant
injury and it's the kind of injury that you might associate with an attempt to humiliate somebody.
The purpose of the DNA analysis is to link the skeleton that we've dug up with a known
living descendant of, not Richard III, but Richard III's sister. Now the reason
that this is Richard III's sister that we're interested in is because we're targeting a
particular kind of DNA called mitochondrial DNA. So not just any relative of Richard III would do,
and that's because the vast majority of our DNA is actually inherited from both of our parents - it's
a complete mixture of that of all of our ancestors. But there's two pieces of DNA which are
inherited in a very simple way. So the first of these is mitochondrial DNA it's passed down just
through the female line, from mother to daughter to daughter, down through the generations.
So every one of us will have mitochondrial DNA the same as our mothers and that gives us a fantastic
opportunity to trace a direct relationship - because if we can find a female direct relation
of Richard III who's had a female child who's had a female child and so on down to the present day,
then we can find somebody who should have the same mitochondrial DNA as Richard III and hopefully
the same mitochondrial DNA as our skeleton. Now we actually had one already in the form of
Michael Ibsen, who was found by John Ashdown-Hill - actually John had found his mom and then Michael
agreed to take part in the study. But Professor Kevin Schurer here at the University of Leicester
also carried out genealogical research and within just a matter of weeks found a second relative,
who is distantly related to Michael. So I had two modern day relatives of Richard III and what
I really needed to do was to check whether or not they matched each other. So what I did was I did
their sequencing and I checked to see whether or not they matched - and they matched each other,
and that confirms the genealogical evidence. So then my next step was to match that with the
DNA from the skeletal remains. So what I did was I lined up all three of those sequences and very
carefully went through to check and see whether or not they matched each other - and they did.
So obviously this project was really of two different parts - so you've got the
archaeological side, but then you've also got the DNA side of the project.
And certainly the archaeological side of it was looking fantastic and what I was able to bring to
this was that there was a DNA match. I think all of the evidence points to this being Richard III.