Mystery of skeleton in Roman coffin at Westminster Abbey solved

What BBN said about it

1. 

   Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorA skeleton found in a Roman coffin at Westminster Abbey has been identified after a hundred and fifty years of puzzling, Live Science reports.

2. 

   Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorA hundred and fifty years to work out whose bones they were?

3. 

   Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorRadiocarbon dating puts them between nine eighty-seven and one thousand fifty-two. The coffin is Roman, with an inscription to a man called Valerius Amandinus.

4. 

   Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorSo it was reused in the Middle Ages.

5. 

   Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorSomeone moved into a dead Roman's house.

6. 

   Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorAnd the old description called him a young man, no older than thirty. The bone specialist says thirty-five to forty-nine, about five foot nine.

7. 

   Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorSo they got the age wrong, the height wrong and the century wrong.

8. 

   Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorThe lid broke into six pieces when workers first hit it in eighteen twenty. The skull was later put back together with wire and glue.

9. 

   Dale Bearman · Chief Skeptic & ContributorWire and glue. Give the Abbey two more centuries and the whole building is held up by someone's good intentions and a hot glue gun.

10. 

    Hank Ledger · Lead AnchorThe researcher says he was almost certainly an abbot, given a dignified burial. Six pieces, wire, glue. Dignified, he says.