Pliny the Elder died in the Mount Vesuvius eruption of A.D. 79. Is this his skull?

Just before his death, Pliny — also known as Gaius Plinius Secundus, a military leader and author of the influential tome “Natural History” — was fighting pirates in the Bay of Naples, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. When he saw a strange cloud (later found to be the result of the volcano’s massive eruption), he heroically directed Rome’s imperial fleet southward to Pompeii, where they planned to rescue survivors.