Nearly 2,000 years after a young man died in the Vesuvius volcanic eruption, scientists have discovered that his brain was preserved when it turned to glass in an extremely hot cloud of ash.

A unique, dark-colored glass found inside the skull of a Roman killed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is his brain—cooked into a fossil by an ash cloud. This is the horrific revelation of an international team of researchers who analyzed the glass to determine what conditions would have been needed to produce it.