​The man died alone, lying on his stomach and probably asleep, as hot ash flowed down from Mount Vesuvius. The heat of the eruption, they said, turned the victim's brain into glass. Resembling obsidian stone, they were unlike anything else he had seen, even after studying dozens of other Vesuvius victims. Solid black shards encrusted on the man's skull contained proteins common in brain tissue, researchers found, and had undergone vitrification and transformed into glass. Some think fractured skulls are a result of falling debris, and others now say that the volcano victims in Herculaneum were "baked" through longer exposure to heat, The Post's Michael E. Ruane reported.

Source: Stuff January 24, 2020 06:33 UTC