(Fox News) Images of a man’s skeleton, apparently crushed by a rock during the ancient eruption of Mount Vesuvius went viral after their recent discovery.
The excavation at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii unearthed the remains of the man, who was thought to have crushed while attempting to flee the eruption in 79 A.D.
After discovering the unfortunate man’s skull, however, experts now think that the he befell a different, but similarly gruesome, fate. “In the early phase of the excavation it appeared that the upper part of the thorax and the skull, which had not yet been found, had been severed and dragged downwards by a stone block which had struck the victim,” officials explained, in a Facebook post. “His death was presumably not, therefore, due to the impact of the stone block, as initially assumed, but likely to asphyxia caused by the pyroclastic flow.”
Advertisement - story continues below
