Portrait of an 8-year-old Neanderthal boy who lived more than 30,000 years ago ... trends now

Portrait of an 8-year-old Neanderthal boy who lived more than 30,000 years ago ... trends now
Portrait of an 8-year-old Neanderthal boy who lived more than 30,000 years ago ... trends now

Portrait of an 8-year-old Neanderthal boy who lived more than 30,000 years ago ... trends now

The face of an eight-year-old Neanderthal boy who died more than 30,000 years ago has been reconstructed by scientists who used a skull initially found in the Teshik-Tash cave in Uzbekistan in 1938.

The portrait is the first three-dimensional restoration of a Neanderthal skull fossil, which reveals the young boy had a small, turned-up nose that sunk into his face.

The fossil is the first Neanderthal fossil discovered in Asia and the only complete Asian Neanderthal skull fossil preserved so far.

The team, led by China's Jilin University and Russia's Moscow State University, believes that the restoration shows the facial shape of prehistoric humans in Eurasia and displays the morphological characteristics of Neanderthals in Central Asia.

The portrait reveals the young boy had a small, turned-up nose that sunk into his face

The portrait reveals the young boy had a small, turned-up nose that sunk into his face

The skull, dubbed Teshik-Tash 1, was found in a shallow pit inside the cave, along with five pairs of Siberian ibex horn cores and bird skeletons.

And this suggests he was buried ritually. 

However, it was not until 2021 was the boy determined to be a Neanderthal by researchers from the Max Planck Institute.

The team analyzed the skull's frontal bone, noting that the shape matched that of previous Neanderthal skulls. 

And a DNA analysis showed that Teshik-Tash 1 carried mtDNA of the Neanderthal type.

At an estimated eight years old, the child had matured enough physically to exhibit distinctive Neanderthal characteristics, such as a large face and nasal area, a long, low cranium, a mandible without a chin, and a maturing brow ridge. 

The original skull was reconstructed from approximately 150 fragments.

The team uploaded a scan of the skull and filled in the missing pieces, allowing them to overlay digital muscles, skin and finish with the boy's facial features.

'Fossils of Neanderthals, an extinct relative of modern humans, were first discovered in the Neanderthal Valley in Germany and were once widely distributed across Eurasia,' head of the team at Jilin University Zhang Quanchao told Xinhua. 

It was long believed that Neanderthals only roamed the landscapes of Europe during the

read more from dailymail.....

NEXT The UK's most sustainable restaurants are revealed - and it's bad news for KFC ... trends now