SINOP, BRAZIL—Live Science reports that Brazilian graphics expert Cícero Moraes and his colleagues employed existing computed tomography scans to create a facial approximation of the so-called Zlatý kůň woman, whose 45,000-year-old skull was recovered from a cave system in what is now the Czech Republic in 1950. The modern human skull had been split in two, and parts of it are missing due to damage by animals. Analysis of DNA from the skull also showed that about three percent of the woman’s genome came from Neanderthal ancestry. Moraes also used CT scans of a modern man and woman, as well as data previously compiled in another reconstruction project, to replace the missing portions of the skull and create the Zlatý kůň image. He suggests that she had a strong jaw and a large brain cavity, perhaps due to her Neanderthal ancestry. No data was available for skin, hair, and eye colors, but the team members gave her dark curly hair and brown eyes. “In my opinion, morphological data can provide a reasonable idea of what the shape of her head and face might have been but not an accurate representation of her soft tissues,” commented archaeologist Cosimo Posth of the University of Tübingen. He was not involved in the reconstruction project, but has studied Zlatý kůň extensively. Read the original scholarly article about this research in OrtogOnline. For more on prehistoric archaeology in the region, go to "World Roundup: Czech Republic."
