Excavations Show Power of Mt. Vesuvius Eruption
The preserved footprints and abandoned homes of villagers who fled a giant eruption of Mt. Vesuvius 3,800 years ago show the volcano could destroy modern-day Naples with little warning, Italian and U.S. researchers reported Monday.
The eruption buried entire villages as far as 15 miles from the volcano, cooking people as they tried to escape and dumping several feet of ash and mud. New excavations, reported in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show far more extensive damage than that found at the more famous site of Pompeii, buried in AD 79.
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