Identification

JO APPLEBY, OSTEOLOGIST AT UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER , TALKING ABOUT THE ANALYSIS OF RICHARD'S SKELETON
"They were actually pretty well preserved. The surfaces were good, so you could see a lot. And then we look at different features of the skeleton to work out the age at death, in so far as we can. Adult age of death is a slightly imprecise science. It's based on sort of degenerative changes in the adult skeleton, which can be very variable between individuals. So, you can't, you can't say it to a particular year, but you can say it roughly and better for younger people than for older ones."

JO APPLEBY, OSTEOLOGIST AT UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER, TALKING ABOUT EXTRACTING RICHARD'S DNA
"We needed to take samples for DNA analysis. And once we took those samples, they obviously wouldn't be there anymore. But at the same time, if I'm going to be doing my analysis, there's a risk of contamination. So, we kind of, we worked out, okay, we're going to take the teeth and so must make sure we record those. And then Turi and I suited up and went and removed a couple of teeth for the DNA analysis, I think, which was awful, because they were quite well held into the jaw."

KEVIN SCHURER, HISTORIAN AND GENEAOLOGIST TALKING ABOUT STORING A SAMPLE FOR DNA TESTING
"And anyway, at the weekend, I had some friends around on Saturday night, and one of them came back after having been to the bathroom. They said, "Are you on medications? Is everything okay?" They said, "We saw that there's a sample jar in the bathroom", and I go "Oh my God, you didn't touch it, you didn't touch it, oh no, no, no". I was panicking that it might be contaminated. And they said, "No, no, no, we just saw it". I said, "Fine, just leave it". And they said, "What's all that about, then?" I said, "I can't tell you, I can't tell you, it's a secret". And that's the sample. And I gave it to Turi obviously on the Monday morning and Turi then obviously extracted the mitochondrial DNA from it."

KEVIN SCHURER, HISTORIAN AND GENEAOLOGIST TALKING TO COLLEAGUES ABOUT NEEDING A 2ND LINE OF DESCENT
"So, I said realistically, there's a real danger if you concentrate just on one mitochondrial strand, because if it doesn't match, it doesn't actually tell you anything. All it tells you is that it doesn't match, the error could be in both directions, if you see what I mean. So, I said you've got to triangulate that with at least one other mitochondrial line to the present day. And they all looked at me and said "Yeah, that's why we're here, that's what we want you to do.""

KEVIN SCHURER, HISTORIAN AND GENEAOLOGIST, TALKING ABOUT TRACING WENDY DULDIG
"I noticed that somebody called Wendy Duldig (from the 2nd line of descent) had been a co-author of an article written by a research unit. And I knew somebody at the University of Essex, where I worked previously, who must have been in that research unit at the same time. So, I phoned them up and said, "Do you happen to remember somebody called Wendy Duldig, who would have been working in your research unit 20 odd years ago?". He said "Oh, yeah, she was Australian, wasn't she?". I said "Yeah, that's the one". I said, "You don't know where she is now, do you?" He said, "Oh no, no, she left, and we never heard from her, but she was actually very close to someone I know" and I contacted them, and I got contact details from them, and we made contact with Wendy, and the rest as they say is history."