Facial reconstructions help the past come alive. But are they accurate?

The man gazes straight ahead, his eyes as dark as coals. His nose juts prominently from his tan face, which has become creased with wrinkles over time. Tufts of gray hair sprout from his balding head. He could be anyone — a neighbor, a parent, a friend.

Studies with real people suggest that facial approximations do a good job of making recognizable images. But the accuracy of these reconstructions can devolve to guesswork when fossil skulls are damaged. What's more, researchers sometimes use opaque or biased datasets, which can limit a reconstruction's accuracy.

Like Wilkinson, Nilsson uses the skull as the foundation for the final image, taking measurements to get an approximation of the person's face shape. In his career, he has created a range of likenesses, from a mysterious Bronze Age woman found buried in a crouched position in a quarry in Scotland to an Inca teenager known as"Juanita" or the"Ice Maiden" who died more than 500 years ago as part of a sacrificial ritual.

"The more information we have on how someone lived, the better we can portray them," Wilkinson told Live ScienceReasonably accurateStudies show these reconstructions can be fairly good. For instance, in one study, researchers at Face Lab used skull dimensions to approximate the faces of a living woman and man, and then asked 52 volunteers to pick the real face from a group of five photographs of people of the same sex, ancestry and age.

So, for his 2018 reconstruction of Ava, Cícero Moraes, a Brazilian graphics expert who regularly collaborates with local police to create facial approximations of crime victims, used data from CT scans of living donors to give her a new jaw. But it's not a perfect process. This can dramatically reduce the accuracy of some reconstructions. For instance, using skull dimensions to estimate ancestry failed 80% of the time for individuals of"mixed" ancestry, a 2021 study in the Journal of Forensic Sciences found. Researchers can minimize the impact of this bias by using global databases with subjects from around the world, Hayes wrote in a 2017 study in the journal Antiquity.

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Incan 'Ice Maiden' who died in sacrifice 500 years ago revealed in hyper-realistic facial reconstructionJennifer Nalewicki is a Salt Lake City-based journalist whose work has been featured in The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, Scientific American, Popular Mechanics and more. She covers several science topics from planet Earth to paleontology and archaeology to health and culture. Prior to freelancing, Jennifer held an Editor role at Time Inc.
Source: LiveScience - 🏆 538. / 51 Read more »

'Spectacular' hall, likely used by Nordic Bronze Age royalty, unearthed in GermanyJennifer Nalewicki is a Salt Lake City-based journalist whose work has been featured in The New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, Scientific American, Popular Mechanics and more. She covers several science topics from planet Earth to paleontology and archaeology to health and culture. Prior to freelancing, Jennifer held an Editor role at Time Inc.
Source: LiveScience - 🏆 538. / 51 Read more »