A NEANDERTHAL has been brought back to life by a facial reconstruction expert at a Scottish university.
Dr Christopher Rynn, of the University of Dundee, recreated the face of a Neanderthal known as Ned – which has not been seen for 50,000 years – as part of a new documentary.
The BBC series, Neanderthals: Meet Your Ancestors, also features Hollywood star Andy Serkis, known for his performance-capture work.
Rynn reconstructed Ned from a plastic cast of a skull found in Iraq, and a team of scientists then used the fossil skeleton to create a digital Neanderthal body.
Using the same type of motion capture technology as films such as Lord of the Rings and Planet of the Apes, they then created the first scientifically accurate, 3D working avatar of a Neanderthal.
They were able to reconstruct a hunt, modelling their voices thousands of years on, and put Ned among commuters on a tube train to see how he would blend in.
Dr Rynn said: “Having reconstructed Ned’s face, I am as excited as anyone to see how he looks in the final show and to see what the producers have done with him.
“I have been bursting to tell people about this since the filming took place almost a year ago but was sworn to secrecy so I’m relieved I can finally talk about the show.
“I was working from a plastic cast of Ned’s skull, which tells a story in itself. Ned was in his thirties when he died, but the skull shows he had received a severe head injury when he was in his teens. The severity and location of the injury means he would likely have been blind and deaf on the left side, while the withered nature of the right side of his skeleton means he would have been quite severely disabled.
“Despite this, he lived for another 20 years after his injury and was found with other members of his family. He would have been unable to care for himself so this provided the first evidence that Neanderthals looked after each other.”
Neanderthals: Meet Your Ancestors airs on BBC2 at 8pm on Sunday. The second part will be shown at the same time on May 20.
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