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When Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year 79 AD it levelled the town of Pompeii and wiped out its 16,000 inhabitants.

Including, apparently, one man enjoying a bit of personal time.

That's the internet's theory on a picture shared by the Pompeii Archaeological Park's Instagram account showing the preserved body of a man killed during the eruption.

Naturally, the so-called "Pompeii Masturbator" has attracted some choice examples of internet humour as it made its way around Twitter, Reddit at 4Chan.

Sadly for internet sniggerers everywhere, experts have disputed the idea the man spent his last waking moments on Earth engaging in an act of self-gratification.

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“There is no way to demonstrate any ‘masturbating man,’ and it is out of place to discuss such an affirmation of some young time waster,” volcanologist Pier Paolo Petrone told the Daily Dot .

Instead, he was likely frozen in this pose by the extreme heat shock as he was enveloped by the pyroclastic surge of gas and ash that coated the town and killed most of the population.

That same coating is what has kept him preserved 1,938 years later.

(Image: Getty)

“Most of the human victims found in Pompeii often show ‘strange’ position of arms and legs, due to the contraction of limbs as a consequence of the heat effect on their bodies after death occurred,” explained Dr Perone, who has been studying victims of the eruption of Vesuvius for the last 25 years.

Still, when has the internet ever let facts get in the way of a good meme?