A 400-year-old skull that French researchers believe was the head of celebrated King Henri IV was squirreled away for decades in the attic of a now-retired public servant, and now has been handed over to one of his Bourbon dynasty descendants. "The original analysis looked good," Galloway said. Illegitimacy — not of his methods but among many princelings of the French court — may explain the genetic mismatch, Charlier has argued. Though beloved by most of his people, the Bourbon monarch was assassinated in 1610 after 21 years on the throne. declared Jean-Jacques Cassiman, an emeritus professor at the University of Leuven and coauthor of the Belgian team's study, whose results were published in the European Journal of Human Genetics this month. (That "sample" was collected on Jan. 21, 1793, when a spectator at La Place de la Revolution in Paris thrust out the cloth to capture blood gushing from Louis' headless body.) But researchers from the University of Leuven in Belgium were not so sure the head belonged to Good King Henry. The DNA from both failed to match samples from other royal families on record. Ruehli said given the lack of complete data, it was impossible to know for sure whom the head belonged to.
– Forensic researchers have a royal dispute on their hands: They can't agree on whether a mummified head belongs to France's Henry IV, explains the Los Angeles Times. The question seemed settled in 2010 when a team of researchers used facial-reconstruction techniques to conclude that it was indeed "Good King Henry," who was assassinated in 1610. But now a second team of scientists says it isn't so because DNA tests don't match Henry's living relatives. They wrote this week to the British Medical Journal urging a retraction of the earlier study, and, in fact, two members of the 2010 team agree that their conclusions were faulty. Not so, says the lead researcher from 2010. He explained to phys.org in an earlier story that it's useless to make conclusions based on DNA results in part because the French royals were such philanderers. "It is hopeless to try to match a family tree and a series of genetic links (over) such a long period," he said. Until things get settled, the mummified head is resting in a bank vault in Paris. (In other mummified news, click to read about a big find in Peru's capital.)