LEICESTER, England (Reuters) - British researchers said on Monday that a skeleton with a cleaved skull and a curved spine entombed under a car park was that of Richard III, solving a 500-year-old mystery about the final resting place of the last English king to die in battle.

Richard, depicted by William Shakespeare as a monstrous tyrant who murdered two princes in the Tower of London, was killed fighting his eventual successor Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth Field in central England in 1485.

A team of archaeologists and historians from the University of Leicester said evidence showed that a skeleton found last year during excavations of a medieval friary under a parking lot in the city was indeed that of Richard.

Richard Buckley, the lead archaeologist on the project, said the remains were Richard's.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)