Plaster casts of calcified Pompeii residents have long been used by archaeologists to tell the stories of the last, desperate moments of ancient Romans before they were buried and preserved in pyroclastic ash from Mount Vesuvius in A.

The results of new DNA tests just dropped this week, and they prove that we don't know as much about Pompeii as we once believed.

People have long been fascinated by the haunting plaster casts of the bodies of people who died in Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE. Archaeologists have presented certain popular narratives about who these people might have been and how they ...