An international group of scientists reconstructed the appearance of two famous ancient human ancestors – a model of a woman Lucy and a child Taung. The Daily Mail reports.
The researchers aimed to create the most realistic reconstruction of the samples. Models are made from silicone impressions with skin pigmentation and individual hairs, carefully applied by hand.
Woman Lucy and Child Taung are well-preserved individuals of various extinct hominin species that were discovered in Africa in 1974 and 1924.
Lucy, an adult female Australopithecus afarensis found in Ethiopia, lived about 3.2 million years ago. Her remains are housed in the Ethiopian National Museum in Addis Ababa, and their casts are on display.
The Taung baby was a member of the species Australopithecus africanus that died at the age of three and lived in what is now South Africa about 2.5 million years ago. Only the skull was found and is now housed at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.