Experts have successfully reconstructed the face of a Neanderthal boy, featuring characteristics such as a flat nose, from a skull discovered in a cave in Uzbekistan.
A team of scientists from Jilin University (China) and Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia) reconstructed the face of an 8-year-old Neanderthal boy who died over 30,000 years ago from a skull found in 1938, according to a report by Mail on January 19.
Face of the 8-year-old Neanderthal boy. (Photo: Jilin University)
This is the first three-dimensional reconstruction from the fossilized skull of a Neanderthal, showing that the boy had a flat nose. This skull is also the first Neanderthal fossil discovered in Asia and is the only well-preserved complete Neanderthal skull fossil from Asia to date.
The research team believes that the reconstruction illustrates the facial shape of prehistoric humans on the Eurasian continent and reflects the morphological features of Neanderthals in Central Asia.
The skull, named Teshik-Tash 1, was found in a shallow pit in the Teshik-Tash Cave in Uzbekistan, along with five pairs of Siberian mountain goat horns and bird bones. This suggests that the boy was buried according to some ancient ritual.
However, it wasn’t until 2021 that researchers from the Max Planck Institute identified the boy as a Neanderthal. The research team analyzed the frontal bone and noted that this shape matched previously recorded Neanderthal skulls.
DNA analysis also indicated that Teshik-Tash 1 carried mitochondrial DNA from Neanderthals. The boy was around 8 years old, which means he was physically mature enough to exhibit characteristic Neanderthal features such as a large face and nose, a long and low skull, an indistinct chin, and prominent brow ridges.
The original skull was reconstructed from about 150 fragments. The research team from Jilin University and Lomonosov Moscow State University uploaded scans of the skull, filled in the missing pieces, and then added muscles and skin to complete the boy’s facial features.
“Neanderthal fossils – the extinct relatives of modern humans – were first discovered in the Neander Valley, Germany, and once lived widely across the Eurasian continent,” said Zhang Quanchao, the lead researcher at Jilin University.
Experts previously believed that Neanderthals only inhabited Europe during the last Ice Age, but a study by the University of Washington in 2015 suggested that they may have ventured further east and coexisted with modern humans there longer than scientists had previously thought.
