THIS is the face of a patient from the 13th century that a research team from Dundee University has helped colleagues in Cambridge to reconstruct.
Scientists believe the man – known formally as Context 959 – died about 700 years ago. His skeleton was among 400 sets of remains found beneath St John’s College, which was founded on the site of the Hospital of St John.
Dr Chris Rynn, from Dundee University’s Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification, told The National the pictures – and an accompanying video – show all the stages of facial reconstruction, and involved some guesswork.
Rynn said: “The facial features are estimated separately and individually, based directly on the bone. The mouth is based on teeth and dental occlusion; eyeball protrusion, eye shape and eyebrow shape are based on orbit shape from the front and side and the presence of a brow ridge.”
“The rest of the facial surface is estimated by fusing the muscles and skull into a single model, then growing it a few millimetres and smoothing it off to make it more of a convincing human face. “The aim of a forensic facial reconstruction is to elicit a recognition reaction to help identify a missing person, so anything which is estimated wrongly could preclude it from being effective.
“An archaeological facial reconstruction is more to bring a character to life, to enable interaction with a person from the past, so we have more artistic licence to put detail into things such as surface textures, facial expressions, hair and so on.”
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