Skeleton under car park England’s Richard III

A skeleton found under a car park in the English city of Leicester was on Monday confirmed as that of king Richard III, widely depicted as one of history’s most notorious villains.

Researchers from the University of Leicester matched DNA from the 500-year-old skeleton with a descendant of the king’s sister, while the injuries to the body were consistent with the person being killed in battle.

“It is the academic conclusion of the University of Leicester that, beyond reasonable doubt, the individual exhumed at Greyfriars in September last year, is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England,” lead archaeologist Richard Buckley said to applause at a press conference at the university.

He said the king’s remains would now be re-interred at Leicester Cathedral, in keeping with archaeological practice to bury remains on the nearest consecrated ground.

The find has caused huge excitement among historians, as it finally provides firm evidence about a monarch whose life has been shrouded in controversy ever since his death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.

Richard’s body was paraded naked and bloody from the battlefield back to Leicester, in central England, on the back of a horse before being buried in an unmarked grave at Greyfriars, a friary in the city.