Scientists reveal the face of a Neanderthal who lived 75,000 years ago

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 A 40-something woman was buried in a cave 75,000 years ago, laid to rest in a gully hollowed out to accommodate her body. Her left hand was curled under her head, and a rock behind her head may have been placed as a cushion.

Known as Shanidar Z, after the cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where she was found in 2018, the woman was a Neanderthal, a type of ancient human that disappeared around 40,000 years ago.

Scientists studying her remains have painstakingly pieced together her skull from 200 bone fragments, a process that took nine months. They used the contours of the face and skull to guide a reconstruction to understand what she may have looked like.
The striking recreation is featured in a new documentary “Secrets of the Neanderthals” produced by BBC for Netflix, which is available for streaming on Thursday.

With pronounced brow ridges and no chins, the skulls of Neanderthals look different from those of our own species, Homo sapiens, said Dr. Emma Pomeroy, a paleoanthropologist and associate professor with the University of Cambridge’s department of archaeology who unearthed the skeleton and appears in the new film. The Shanidar Z facial reconstruction suggests that these differences might not have been so stark in life, Pomeroy said.

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Neanderthals lived across Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia Mountains for around 300,000 years, overlapping with modern humans for 30,000 years or so. Analysis of DNA from present-day humans has revealed that, during this time, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens occasionally encountered one another and interbred.

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