Osbourne is distant relative of outlaw Jesse James

London: Ozzy Osbourne is a descendant of a Neanderthal man, according to researchers who have studied the singer’s DNA.

The researchers discovered that the star shares some DNA with the ancient Romans who were killed in Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. He is also a distant relative of outlaw Jesse James, the last Russian tsar Nicholas II and King George I. Scientists made the discovery by taking a sample of the singer’s blood at his home in Buckinghamshire and sending it to a lab in New Jersey in the U.S. Using a state-of-the-art 12,000 pound test, they were able to unlock his genetic code, or genome. The 61-year-old hellraiser, who has survived years of drug abuse and alcohol addiction, joked that news of his Neanderthal heritage would not come “as much of a surprise” to his wife Sharon or to police departments around the world. He famously bit the head off a bat while drunk on stage, broke his neck in a quad bike accident in 2003 and has admitted there’s “no plausible reason” why he is still alive. “That means I’m also probably related to some of the survivors, which makes a lot of sense,” the Daily Mail quoted him as saying. The Black Sabbath frontman claims his “superhuman” genes have kept him healthy despite a lifetime of rock ’n’ roll excess. “If any of the Roman Osbournes drank nearly as much as I used to, they wouldn’t have even felt the lava. They could have just walked it off,” he said. ANI