Scientists Approximate Face of 315,000-Year-Old Human
The Facts
- Researchers published a digital facial approximation of the Jebel Irhoud hominin from Morocco, whose fossil remains date to roughly 315,000 years ago, in the journal Heritage, with the study appearing online Sept. 13.
- The portrait does not depict a single person. It draws on a composite skull assembled from several individuals found in the same archaeological layer, with Irhoud 1 supplying the braincase and upper face and Irhoud 11 providing the lower jaw.
- The team turned images and video released in 2017 by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology into a 3D skull using photogrammetry, then reshaped a CT scan of a modern adult donor to match the fossil's contours.
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The Spin
Narrative A
Standing eye to eye with a 315,000-year-old ancestor is nothing short of spectacular, and it took cutting-edge science to pull it off. Turning scattered fragments into a living, breathing portrait shows just how far technology has come in bringing the deep past into focus. Moments like this prove the power of science never stops astonishing.
Narrative B
The hair, the skin tone, the beard — none of that comes from the bone, so calling this a portrait of a real person oversells what the evidence supports. The real payoff is the workflow itself: open-source, transparent and reproducible, with every soft-tissue choice anchored to the skull. That template is what makes the next reconstruction of incomplete fossil remains possible.
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