SCIENCE-RICHARD III/FILE Gene studies suggest King Richard III was a blond, blue-eyed boy

Record ID: 863488

  • Title: SCIENCE-RICHARD III/FILE Gene studies suggest King Richard III was a blond, blue-eyed boy
  • Date: 2nd December 2014
  • Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK (FILE - FEBRUARY 5, 2013) (REUTERS) ****WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** TUDOR PORTRAITS OF EDWARD IV , BROTHER OF RICHARD III ( ON LEFT) AND OF RICHARD III (ON RIGHT ) HANGING ON WALL PORTRAIT OF RICHARD III
  • Embargoed: 17th December 2014 12:00
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  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAD0GNQBR1CB802AI0YFLHLPW4I
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  • Story Text: British scientists analysing 500-year-old bones found under a car park say it is now beyond almost any doubt that the remains are of King Richard III, and that studies suggest he had blue eyes and blond hair as a boy.
    Publishing their latest findings in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from Leicester University also said DNA analysis showed a match between King Richard III and two modern female-line relatives.
    The remains of Richard -- the last English monarch to die in battle -- were found by archaeologists under a municipal car park in the central English city of Leicester in 2012 and subsequently identified by experts from the university.
    In a research paper published in September, the scientists were able to give blow-by-blow details of the King's death at the Battle of Bosworth more than 500 years ago, revealing he was very probably killed by a blow to his bare head.
    For the latest work, led by genetics expert Dr Turi King, researchers collected DNA from living relatives of Richard III and analysed several genetic markers, including the complete mitochondrial genomes, inherited through the maternal line, and Y-chromosomal markers, inherited through the paternal line.
    They found that while the Y-chromosomal markers differ, the mitochondrial genome shows a genetic match between the skeleton and the maternal line relatives.
    This allowed them to confirm that Wendy Duldig is a niece of Richard III, 18 times removed, and Michael Ibsen is Richard III's nephew, 16 times removed.
    King said her team were now 99.999 percent sure the remains were Richard and a 500-year-old "missing person's case" could finally be closed.
    "If you bring all of this data together, you get a likelihood ratio of 6.7 million /1 that these are the remains of Richard III. Now you can convert that into a probability - that translates to a probability of 99.99 to 99.99999 percent that these are the remains of Richard III. Or the chances that it's not him is less than 100,000 to less than one in a million. So, the evidence is overwhelming that these are the remains of Richard III," King told a news conference.
    The team also used genetic markers to determine Richard's hair and eye colour and found he was probably blond, especially as a child, and almost certainly had blue eyes.
    "It's amazing to be able to do this sort of thing on ancient remains and because of this sort of ambiguity about Richard's hair and eye colour, it is interesting to be able to bring genetic data to that," she said.
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