1st century C.E. Roman relief portraying gladiators and lions fighting. Roman gladiators’ fights to the death have inspired morbid fascination for millennia. But for something seemingly so ...

A Roman gladiator’s skeleton has provided the first piece of physical evidence of combat between a human and a large cat, archaeologists said. The skeleton, likely of a man who died between the ages ...

Bite marks found in a Roman-era skeleton are the first physical evidence of “human-animal gladiatorial combat,” archeologists said in a new study. Teeth imprints of a large cat were found in the ...

In April 2025, archaeologists announced an amazing discovery from Driffield Terrace cemetery in York: the bite marks on a third-century skeleton proving combat with a lion. This is the first hard ...

Ancient Roman gladiators were often pitted against animals in the arena—animals capable of killing a human being. Skeletal remains in a Roman burial ground in northern England were found to have ...

Puncture injuries by large felid scavenging on both sides of bone. A skeleton from Roman-era England has bite marks consistent with those of a large cat like a lion, suggesting that this individual ...

Ridley Scott may have been ridiculed for portraying gladiators riding rhinos and scrapping with sharks in his latest film. But it seems the real Roman fighters did pick fights with a colourful array ...

Archaeological evidence suggests the existence of "Gladiatrix," female gladiators who competed in ancient Rome.