LEICESTER, England — A skeleton with a cleaved skull and a curved spine dug up from under a parking lot is that of Richard III, archaeologists announced yesterday, solving a 500-year-old mystery about the final resting place of the last English king to die in battle.
Cast by Shakespeare as a deformed tyrant who murdered two princes in the Tower of London, Richard was slain as he fought to keep his crown at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. In the play, his character cries out: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”
A team from the University of Leicester said evidence showed that a skeleton found last year in excavations of a medieval friary under a city parking lot was that of Richard.The skeleton had 10 wounds, eight of them in the head, clearly inflicted in battle and suggesting that the king had lost his helmet. The skeleton showed a high-protein diet of meat and fish that would reflect life at court.
The findings hinged on DNA taken from the skeleton matching that of Michael Ibsen, a Canadian-born furniture maker in London who genealogists said was the direct descendant of Richard’s sister, Anne of York.
The remains of Richard, who died at age 32 after two years on the throne, will be interred at Lei-cester Cathedral.