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British researchers said on Monday that a skeleton with a cleaved skull and a curved spine entombed under a car park was that of Richard III, solving a 500-year-old mystery about the final resting place of the last English king to die in battle.
Richard, depicted by William Shakespeare as a monstrous tyrant who murdered two princes in the Tower of London, was killed fighting his eventual successor Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth Field in central England in 1485.
A team of archaeologists and historians from the University of Leicester said evidence showed that a skeleton found last year during excavations of a medieval friary under a parking lot in the city was indeed that of Richard.
The skeleton showed signs of injuries consistent with wounds received in battle; a bladed implement appeared to have cleaved part of the rear of the skull while a barbed metal arrowhead was found between vertebrae of the skeleton's upper back.
