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The original was posted on /r/explainlikeimfive by /u/jujulita_moi on 2023-06-25 13:24:57+00:00.
There was recently news of a grup of scientists who reconstructed the face of a teenager who lived 1300 years ago in Britain. How is this possible? I can understand that they could infer skin color or even eye color from the region the remains are found but how can they possibly know from bones if the person has a hooked nose or bulging eyes or a wide mouth etc? You know, the features that usually are the features which make us different from one another. How?? Is this part make believe?
There’s a surprising amount of information in the skull and teeth. They can tell a lot about the size and shape of the nose by the geometry of the opening in the skull. The size of the ears often correlates to the size of the nose. They can tell the width of the lips by the placement of the teeth. The size of the facial muscles also leaves an imprint on where they attach to the skull. On top of that, they use some norms based on sex, age, and any other known characteristics.