The man, believed to have been aged between 40 and 45, was killed just steps away from the sea as he tried to flee the eruption, according to the director of the archaeological site, Francesco Sirano.

His skeleton was found on what would have been the ancient town’s beach, with his head pointing back in the direction of the sea and surrounded by heavy carbonised wood, including a roof beam that could have crushed his skull.

“The last moments here were instantaneous, but terrible,” Sirano told Italian news agency ANSA.

“It was 1:00 am when the pyroclastic surge produced by the volcano reached the town for the first time with a temperature of 300-400°C, or even, according to some studies, 500-700°C.

“The white-hot cloud that raced towards the sea at a speed of 100 kilometres per hour was so dense that it had no oxygen in it.”

“In the space of a few minutes, it engulfed the upper part of the town, uprooting the roofs and mowing down men and animals with a heat that made their bodies evaporate.”

The man’s bones were a bright red colour, which Sirano said was “the mark of the stains left by the victim’s blood”, due to combustion.

The discovery was made during the first archaeological dig at Herculaneum, a much smaller and less well-known site than nearby Pompeii, in almost three decades.

It was located at the same place where excavations in the 1980s and 1990s unearthed the skeletons of more than 300 victims piled in boat sheds, where they are believed to have been sheltering while they waited to be rescued by the fleet of Pliny the Elder.

As the man was found at the edge of the sea rather than in the boat sheds, it is unclear whether he was a fugitive fleeing the eruption or a member of Pliny the Elder’s rescue fleet.

“He may have been a companion of one of Pliny’s officers, who was found in the 1980s about 20 metres from this point, again on the beach,” Sirano said.

“Or he could have been a fugitive, who had left the group to reach the sea hoping to embark on one of the rescue ships, or perhaps even the last and most unfortunate of a group that had managed to make it to sea.”

In order to understand more about the events of that fateful night, the skeleton will be removed and studied in a laboratory.

The first in situ examinations revealed traces of what appear to be fabric and metal around the skeleton, which may have been a bag with work tools, weapons or coins.   

“The sensational discovery of the remains of a fugitive at the archaeological site of Herculaneum is great news, first of all because the find is due to the resumption in this place, after almost 30 years, of scientific excavations conducted by the ministry’s technical staff,” Italy’s culture minister, Dario Franceschini, said.

Herculaneum was buried under about 15 metres of volcanic ash until it was rediscovered during the digging of a well in the early 18th century.