Skulls Gain Virtual Faces

rw2 writes "Totally cool, The guys at Max Planck Institute for Computer Science have developed a way to reconstruct a persons appearence when a skull is found. When police find a skull and want to know what its owner looked like, they generally use artists who reconstruct the face by building up layers of clay over the skull."

Comments

Oooh!

[bo0ork]

I can't wait to see what that skeleton that hangs in the biology class lab looked like when it was alive!

Pretty neat

[stratjakt]

They've been doing this on every discovery channel special on mummies I've seen for the last year.

Most recently the Nefertiti one that I watched just the other night.

Re:Pretty neat

[Fizzlewhiff]

1. Glue on pencil erasers to set the skin thickness
2. Cover with modeling clay to make the features using the erasers as a guide.
3. ???

You know the rest.

4. Profit ?

How accurate is it?

[Iron Monkey543]

How do youo know if the person was a bit overweight and had a double chin or big cheeks? I know I looked ALOT different when I gained about 20 pounds and kept it for a few months till I couldn't afford pizza buffets anymore.

Also, how can a skull help you determine the shape of the person's eyebrows or the shape of their eyes? And they can't use race as a factor because I know alot of caucasians with various eye shapes.

Re:How accurate is it?

[LaMuk]

30 years ago when I was an Anthropology major, some of my professors built faces back for the Las Vegas police. Sometimes they would start with a skeleton that had been shattered into small pieces.

They were very good about telling age, sex, and race.

They taught us how it was done. Not that I remember much now. But the amount of tissue on the bones is figured out by how thick the bones got a t insertion points. The thicker the bones, the heavier the load.

Sex is easiest to tell by the pelvic bones, but also can be determined by size and shape of face bones. Size helped determine race. It got a little tricky if the bones were small. Was it because the person was female or Asian?

Still they were really good at it and their work identified victims of murders.

Re:Old news. Like, 3,000 years old.

[stratjakt]

The reconstruction scenes were silly!

Do you think Nefertiti and Akenaten sat silently next to each other, slowly turning at regular intervals to give each other shifty eyed knowing glances?

And did you see that one priest dude with the leapord skin shawl and the GIGANTANORMOUS AFRO! The Afro was bigger than him! He was the pimpinest ancient egyptian I ever did see.

And I liked that the whole conclusion that they had found nefertiti was based on "If its not Nefertiti, who else could it be?" Gee I dunno, maybe one of the other BAJILLION people who lived in egypt?

Anyways. I cant stay mad at TV. I just wish they'd stick to CGI dinosaurs.