How I found Richard III underneath a Leicester car park: archaeologist to address Hong Kong Science Museum
Dr Turi King to deliver lecture on how she identified Richard III and his unlikely grave
It sounds like the plot line of a TV show: archaeologists find the remains of a man under a car park and use DNA to piece together his identity.
But it's a real-life endeavour by scientist Dr Turi King, who helped identify the remains of the British monarch Richard III last year. King is in town to deliver a lecture today on how she and the team pieced together the identity of the skeleton.
"Thirty years ago we wouldn't have had the technology. In 30 to 40 years, there would have been no living descendents. Michael and Wendy don't have any kids and probably won't, so it was the perfect window of opportunity," said King, who is a lecturer in genetics and archaeology at the University of Leicester.
It was a group effort on the part of historians, molecular geneticists, genealogists, anthropologists and others to determine the skeleton was indeed the monarch so vilified in history. The last of the Plantagenet dynasty was often portrayed as a malformed murderous despot by the Tudor dynasty that followed.
The DNA analysis conducted by King involved obtaining the mitochondrial DNA from living descendants of Richard III's sister, and isolating the DNA from the skeleton.
"All you have to do is breathe on it and a tonne of your DNA will contaminate the sample," said King. "I had to go in all gloved up, masked and everything - the whole kind of CSI suit," she said.