Tousled gladiator may have been German. A 2000-year-old mosaic uncovered at the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Leptis Magna on the coast of Libya is wowing archaeologists and art historians. The gory depiction of a nearby amphitheater includes a highly detailed profile of a gladiator with his vanquished foe and a spectacular chariot race crash. The 9-meter-long mosaic, described this week in the British archaeological journal Minerva, was discovered in 2002 by a team led by Marliese Wendowski, an archaeologist at the University of Hamburg, Germany. "From the start, we knew we had something special because it was so large," says Wendowski. The team members kept the find a secret while they excavated it and transferred it to the nearby Leptis Magna Museum. "What's extraordinary is how depth was created with foreshortening," a very painterly technique, says Minerva editor Mark Merrony. The artist "must have been working from a drawing," he adds. The mosaic is offering fresh clues for historians. "This was likely an eyewitness account commissioned by a very rich local patron," says Merrony, and it shows how interconnected the Roman empire was at the time. Men are shown wrestling with bears and deer, the first evidence that European animals were imported to Africa for sport. But that's not all. "Judging by his face and hair, I think the gladiator was a German barbarian," says archaeologist Helmut Ziegert, also at the University of Hamburg. That might explain why no name was inscribed, an honor typically bestowed on respected gladiators. CREDIT: HELMUT ZIEGERT/UNIVERSITY OF HAMBURG