Exceptionally well-preserved human brain cells were discovered in the remains of a victim who was killed by the eruption of Italy's Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago, according to an article published in the magazine PLOS ONE. The cells were taken from the remains of a vitrified brain at the archaeological site of Herculaneum, near Pompei, an ancient city in southern Italy buried under volcanic rock in 79 AD. The victim is a young man in his twenties, whose body was found lying on a wooden bed during excavations in the 1960s.