Several wounds were classified as post-mortem, including injuries to the back, the buttocks, and the pelvis. The reasoning was that late-fifteenth-century armor would have protected those areas if the man had been alive and armored; the wounds were therefore likely inflicted after death, when the body was unarmored. Contemporary accounts described Richard’s body being stripped and slung across a horse after the battle, a treatment that would have exposed the body to exactly these kinds of injuries.
Notably absent from the arm bones were any wounds consistent with raising the arms in defense. This absence suggested the man was still armored when the fatal head wounds were inflicted, consistent with the loss or removal of his helmet exposing his head while the rest of his body remained protected.
The dietary analysis, conducted through isotope testing of the bones, indicated a rich diet consistent with the upper levels of medieval society. The isotopes showed the man had eaten freshwater fish, birds including swans, cranes, and herons, and wine. The bones also showed evidence of intestinal roundworms, a common condition in medieval populations regardless of social class.
The radiocarbon dating of the bones presented an initial complication. The first dating results placed the bones slightly too early. The cause, the researchers determined, was the marine reservoir effect: the high consumption of freshwater fish can skew carbon-14 dating results because fish from closed water systems have a different carbon isotope ratio than terrestrial foods. When the dietary isotope data was incorporated into the Bayesian analysis, the calibrated date range tightened considerably, with a 68.2 percent probability that the individual died between 1475 and 1530, and a 95.4 percent probability of a date between 1450 and 1540. Richard III died in 1485, placing his death well within that range.