The Romanovs

Skeletons found by construction workers in a shallow grave in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in July 1991 were tentatively identified as being the remains of the last Tsar, Tsarina and three of their five children - the Romanov family.

Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Tsarina Alexandra and their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei were executed by Bolshevik troops following months of captivity. They were shot in the house of a local merchant on 17 July 1918.

Their bodies were to have been transported to a mineshaft where they would have been disposed of. However, the transport truck developed a mechanical fault along the way and so a shallow grave was hastily dug on the roadside and the bodies buried and sprayed with acid to make them unidentifiable. The bodies of the two other children were never found.

Despite the collection of extensive forensic evidence, this version of events had never been positively verified, and in 1992 the Forensic Science Service (FSS) was approached by the Russian authorities to initiate an Anglo-Russian investigation to authenticate the remains using DNA analysis.

Using samples taken from the surviving bones, the FSS performed DNA-based sex testing and Short Tandem Repeat analysis, the results of which confirmed that a family group was present in the grave. In addition, a further testing technique was employed analysing Mitochondrial DNA.

Mitochondrial DNA is a tiny amount of the total DNA present, and can therefore be used when samples are too small, old or degraded for analysis by normal means. Where there is no body fluid or tissue available Mitochondrial DNA can be taken from bone. Mitochondrial DNA is more likely to survive for prolonged periods than chromosomal DNA and is particularly suited to tracing maternal inheritance and testing relatedness if there are several generations between ancestor and living descendant.

Following this extensive analysis, the FSS concluded that the bones found are those of the last Tsar and his family.