Model of Richard III has to be redone in view of genetic evidence. It appears Richard III Richard III had fair hair and blue eyes
In 2012, a skeleton was excavated at the presumed site of the Grey Friars friary in Leicester, the last-known resting place of King Richard III. Archaeological, osteological and radiocarbon dating data were consistent with these being his remains. To this was added the evidence of an analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of the skeleton and living relatives of the king (descendants of his sister). All of this made the presumed identity of the King in the Carpark as Richard III highly likely.
Nevertheless some historians quibbled about this identification saying it might as well be another victim from Bosworth.
Recently the scientific report of the full DNA analyses was published. These confirm without doubt the identity of the man, whose remains are to be re-interred in Leicester Cathedral next spring.
According to the report published in Nature, there is a perfect mitochondrial DNA match between the sequence obtained from the remains and one living relative, and a single-base substitution when compared with a second relative.
However Y-chromosome haplotypes from male-line relatives and the remains do not match; however this might be attributed to a false-paternity event occurring in any of the intervening generations and does not impinge on the identification of the remains as those of the king. In plain English, this means that along the way someone in the royal family was cuckolded…
Nevertheless, the scientists have calculated the likelihood ratios for the non-genetic and genetic data separately and concluded that the combined evidence for the remains being those of Richard III is overwhelming – 99.99%.
A further result is that the DNA-predicted hair and eye colour are consistent with Richard’s appearance in an early portrait, now owned by the Royal Historical Society. The amusing consequence of this is that the now widely spread reconstruction of the facial remains of Richard III has to be redone!
SOURCE:
Identification of the remains of King Richard III
By Turi E. King, Gloria Gonzalez Fortes, Patricia Balaresque, Mark G. Thomas, David Balding, Pierpaolo Maisano Delser, Rita Neumann, Walther Parson, Michael Knapp, Susan Walsh, Laure Tonasso, John Holt, Manfred Kayser, Jo Appleby, Peter Forster, David Ekserdjian, Michael Hofreiter & Kevin Schürer
In: Nature Communications 5, Article number: 5631. Received 05 August 2014 Accepted 21 October 2014 Published 02 December 2014