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.
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. Speaking about this process, Petrone said: "The brain exposed to the hot volcanic ash must first have liquefied and then immediately turned into a glassy material by the rapid cooling of the volcanic ash deposit."
The researchers also found intact nerve cells in the spinal cord, which, like the brain, had been vitrified.Guido Giordano, a volcanologist at Roma Tre University who worked on the study, told CNN that charred wood found next to the skeleton allowed the researchers to conclude that the site reached a temperature of more than 500 degrees Celsius after the eruption.
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