Victims who perished in Pompeii after the devastating AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius may have been killed by a simultaneous earthquake, research has suggested. Scholars have debated for decades whether seismic activity occurred during the eruption of Vesuvius in southern Italy nearly 2,000 years ago, and not just before it, as reported by Pliny the Younger in his letters.

The article published on Thursday in the academic journal Frontiers in Earth Science took a new look at the now world-famous archaeological site, arguing that one or more concurrent earthquakes were “a contributing cause of building collapse and death of the inhabitants”.