CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND—NBC News reports that the face of a Neanderthal woman dubbed Shanidar Z has been recreated by a team of scientists at the University of Cambridge. The woman’s 75,000-year-old skull was discovered in some 200 pieces during a 2018 excavation of Shanidar Cave, which is located in Iraqi Kurdistan. Analysis of tooth enamel proteins was employed to determine her sex, since only about half of her skeleton was preserved. A CT scan of each skull fragment was made, and the pieces were carefully reassembled by hand. Once the reconstructed skull had been scanned and 3-D printed, paleoarchaeologists Adrie Kennis and Alfons Kennis added layers of muscle and skin to it. The resulting model looks more like a modern human visage than previous Neanderthal reconstructions, according to paleoanthropologist Emma Pomeroy. “The skulls of Neanderthals and humans look very different,” she explained. “Neanderthal skulls have huge brow ridges and lack chins, with a projecting midface that results in more prominent noses. But the recreated face suggests those differences were not so stark in life,” she said. The similarities make it easier to see how interbreeding occurred between modern humans and Neanderthals, Pomeroy concluded. For more on the discovery of Shanidar Z, go to “Z Marks the Spot.”
