The use of Bayesian methods to integrate multiple lines of evidence — radiocarbon dates from different bone types, dietary isotope data, and the archaeological context — rather than relying on a single radiocarbon measurement was itself a methodological advance over simpler approaches to dating. The result was not a single point estimate but a probability distribution, with 68.2 percent of the probability falling between 1475 and 1530, and 95.4 percent between 1450 and 1540. Richard III’s death in 1485 falls comfortably within the most probable range.
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## Kevin Schürer and the Second Line of Descent
Kevin Schürer’s contribution to the Richard III identification has received less public attention than either Philippa Langley’s campaign role or Turi King’s genetics work, but it was methodologically essential to the identification’s persuasiveness.
Schürer is a historical demographer at the University of Leicester whose research focuses on questions of population, family, and social structure across English history. His expertise in tracing genealogical connections through documentary records made him the appropriate person to attempt the independent reconstruction of a second mitochondrial line of descent.
The genealogical challenge was considerable. Anne of York had multiple descendants, but tracing any given line forward required both surviving documentary evidence at each generation and a chain of female descent rather than male — since mitochondrial DNA passes through daughters, not sons, any generation in which a woman had only sons would end that particular line.
Schürer’s research identified Wendy Duldig as a 21-generation female-line descendant of Anne of York through a different genealogical pathway from the one that led to Joy Ibsen. The documentation of this second line added an important element to the identification: instead of a single genealogical chain that could theoretically contain undocumented errors, there were now two independently reconstructed chains converging on the same expected mitochondrial sequence, and two living individuals whose DNA could be compared against the skeleton.