Archaeologists In Britain have discovered a coffin-within-a-coffin at the car park in Leicester where King Richard III was buried for 500 years.
Experts returned to the site of the former Grey Friars Church at the beginning of July to learn more about the area, only to find a fully intact stone casket with a lead coffin inside.
It took eight people to lift the stone lid from the outer coffin, which measures 2m long, 60cm wide at one end, 30cm metres wide at the other and 30cm deep.
Laboratory tests will be carried out on the lead coffin before it can be opened. The archaeologists suspect it may be one of the church's founders or a medieval monk.
The king's body was discovered last year. Confirmation it was Richard III was obtained in February after a battery of tests.
The BBC reports a permanent exhibition about the discovery of Richard is due to open in 2014.
His bones are due to be reinterred in Leicester Cathedral in May 2014, subject to a legal challenge by campaigners who want his body placed in York.
