(CNN) The brain cells of a young man who died almost 2,000 years ago in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius have been found intact by a team of researchers in Italy. The discovery was made when the experts studied remains first uncovered in the 1960s in Herculaneum, a city buried by ash during the volcanic eruption in AD 79. Part of the college of the Augustales, the building in Herculaneum where the young man's remains were found in the 1960s. Pier Paolo Petrone, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Naples Federico II who led the research, told CNN that the project started when he saw "some glassy material shining from within the skull" while he was working near the skeleton in 2018. In a paper published earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine, Petrone and his colleagues revealed that this shiny appearance was caused by the vitrification of the victim's brain due to intense heat followed by rapid cooling.

Source: CNN October 05, 2020 16:07 UTC