The bones belonged to a male. The degree of bone maturity, the fusion of growth plates, and other aging markers placed the individual’s age at death as roughly 30 to 34 years. Richard III had been 32 when he died at Bosworth.
The scoliosis was assessed as idiopathic adolescent scoliosis — a curvature of the spine that develops during adolescence with no single identifiable cause, distinct from the congenital deformities sometimes depicted in older artistic representations of Richard. The condition would have given him an asymmetric upper body and may have affected his posture and gait, but it was not the grotesque deformity described in Shakespeare. There was no evidence of a withered arm.
The injuries on the skeleton told a story consistent with death in a medieval battle. A full analysis published in The Lancet in 2014 identified eleven perimortem wounds — injuries sustained at or near the time of death. Nine were to the skull. Two were to the post-cranial skeleton, meaning the body below the head.
The skull wounds showed evidence of blunt trauma, blade injuries, and penetrating wounds consistent with a variety of late-medieval weapons: swords, halberds, bills, and other pole weapons. Two wounds were assessed as almost certainly the cause of death. One had cut away a substantial portion of the back of the skull; another was a penetrating wound through the lower skull. The first was consistent with a sword or a staff weapon such as a halberd; the second with the tip of a pointed edged weapon.