A Canadian family’s ancient royal bloodline has proven crucial
in finally resolving a 528-year-old mystery surrounding the
whereabouts of King Richard III’s remains, which a team of
British and Canadian scientists — including Vancouver geneticist
Turi King — revealed Monday have been conclusively identified as
the skeleton dug up last summer from beneath a parking lot in
the British city of Leicester. University of Leicester officials
have announced that they did indeed discover the burial site of
the notorious 15th-century monarch in September, the drama of
Monday’s revelation having been stoked by months of speculation
and a steady striptease of scientific disclosures about the
evidence dug up at the paved-over site of the medieval Grey
Friars churchyard where the deposed king — killed during the
nearby Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 — was long believed to
have been interred. The epic “puzzle,” as King described the
identification challenge, was finally solved when DNA extracted
from the unearthed bones w