THREE POMPEII HORSES WERE HARNESSED FOR ESCAPE FROM VESUVIUS ERUPTION

A third horse has been found saddled and ready to ride ... bringing to three the number of horse cadavers found in a Pompeii villa's stable that were harnessed for a frantic escape ... when they tragically were overtaken by the Vesuvius eruption.

Two of the horses had made headlines earlier this year, but the remains of the third horse had been too incomplete to determine whether it was also harnessed at the time of death.

Further examination determined that it too had been wearing a bit and bridle.

When the volcano erupted in 79 AD, many of the town's residents and animals collapsed and died in place after being struck with waves of superheated poisonous gas and ash, called a pyroclastic surge. 

Their decaying bodies then left hauntingly shaped voids in the hardened ash layer. Plaster casts were made of the horses.

Evidence for bits and bridles around the two cast horses suggests that they were harnessed by people trying to flee the eruption, says Massimo Osanna, general director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.