Perhaps one of the more fascinating realizations, back in the 19th Century and during the initial excavation of the lost city of Pompeii, was that the skeletal remains of the victims of Mt. Vesuvius’ eruption, all of whom were buried in mud and ash, had empty spaces around them. Spaces that originally occupied the victims’ flesh.
A grim finding, but one that resulted in a historical curiosity: By pouring plaster into those empty spaces, the empty spaces effectively became a mold of the victims. Once hardened, the plaster would effectively allow modern audiences to “see” the victims of Mt. Vesuvius as they lay dying way back in 79 A.D.
Here then is an article that features some of those plaster figures. Their final moments on this planet must have been agonizing, yet seeing these victims allows us to travel back in time and see people (and animals!) as they were back then.