Basing their work on a skull unearthed in 2018, researchers reconstructed the head of a mid-forties Neanderthal woman who lived 75,000 years ago. Shanidar Z, as she has been named, was about 5ft tall and her sex determined via dental proteins.
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.
Compare to another reconstruction, at a museum in Germany.
