NEW research has revealed that some victims of the Mount Vesuvius eruption in AD 79 had a slower death than previously believed.

It was initially thought that the residents of the seaside town of Herculaneum, who fled to stone boat houses along the beachfront when disaster struck, were vaporised by the extreme heat of the volcanic eruption.

But new research by archaeologists, including academics from the University of York, challenges this interpretation.

Professor Oliver Craig, from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, said: “The realisation that collagen was present in the Herculaneum bones was completely unexpected.

“We realised then that commonly held assumptions regarding the manor of their death could not be true.”

The study re-examined the victims’ skeletons, revealing their structure and remaining collagen was inconsistent with vaporisation.

This suggests that the bodies were not exposed to temperatures as extreme as expected.

Tests conducted on the ribs of 152 individuals revealed they did not match the patterns expected if exposed to high temperatures.