Remember the Pompeii skeleton whose head was crushed by a giant rock? Yep -- FAKE NEWS, too

Greg P. | 8:21 AM on July 04, 2018

Remember this awesome photo from about a month ago that allegedly showed some Roman dude who was lucky enough to survive the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. but died when this giant boulder crushed his skull?

Archaeologists working at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, Italy, uncovered the remains of a 30-year-old man who appears to have survived the initial eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., only to be killed when he was struck by a large slab of stone https://t.co/CgQFTssa6x pic.twitter.com/C4JEvAERMn

— CNN (@CNN) May 29, 2018

Yeah … that was FAKE NEWS, too:

The internet-famous volcano victim may not be the 'Unluckiest Guy in History’ after all. After declaring him decapitated by a large stone, scientists later found his skull, complete with a nearly full set of teeth. #Pompeii https://t.co/Cudu88xjjW

— HISTORY (@HISTORY) July 3, 2018

The working theory at this point is that the giant rock crushed the skeleton much later in time. From the New York Times:

The team thinks the upper part of the man’s torso became separated from the lower half sometime from 1748 and 1815 when Naples was under the control of the Bourbon dynasty. During this time, archaeologists often dug tunnels into the ash. Dr. Osanna and his team thinks the excavators may have dug a tunnel beneath the skeleton which eventually collapsed, causing the skull and upper torso to fall.