Homo habilis - forensic facial reconstruction step-by-step (screenshots)

Last but not least, I finished the reconstruction of a Homo habilis to be exposed at an event about human evolution in May 2013.

I chose to close with this model because I saw an opportunity to test a new methodology.

Upon receiving the skull reconstructed by Prof. Dr. Moacir Elias Santos, it was evident that besides not being very symmetrical parts were missing.

To harmonize the view without losing data, was enough to mirror the object in the X axis But there was still part of the zygomatic arches, and jaw.

Through deformation via Edit Mode (Blender 3D) with Connected activated, it was possible to deform the skull of a chimpanzee until it to conform with the model scanned and imaged.

The details of the reconstruction can be seen in an album I created in Picasaweb:

http://plus.google.com/photos/115430171389306289690/albums/5853134067479146481

Follow the step-by-step via screenshot and see how the work was produced, starting in the import of the skull and ending in the final render.

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These hominids reconstructions are "sons" of Taung Project.

It is a group work by internet in Italy and Brazil.

So, I have to thank some people to make this project possible:

Alesandro and Luca Bezzi (IT)

Giuseppe Naponiello (IT)

Arc-Team (IT)

Moreno Tiziani, Antrocom (IT)

Dr. Nicola Carrara (IT)

Antropological Museum of Padua (IT)

Prof. Dr. Moacir Elias Santos (BR)

Vivian Noitel Valim Tedardi (BR)

Thank you very much!

The Taung Child

Dr. Nicola Carrara, curator of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Padua, sent us a note on the Taung project which we willingly share:

The Paleoanthropology is littered with nicknames assigned to various discovered hominin fossils: Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), Mrs Ples (Australopithecus africanus), Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus), Twiggy (Homo habilis), the Turkana Boy (Homo ergaster), The Hobbit (Homo floresiensis), the old man of Cro-Magnon man (Homo sapiens) are some of the most famous examples.

Naming the living beings is one of the tasks of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Giving a name to someone is the first way to know him, take him into our circle and, somehow, pigeonholing him.

But the name alone is not enough. To know someone, we also need to see his face. Name and Face are an inseparable pair to frame a person, so much that you go often in crisis when someone greets us, and we identify his face, but we can not remember the associated name.

Or, when you go back with memories, you feel uncomfortable with the fact that we remember the name of some people but not the features. Incidents of this type are common and show a fundamental process of our brain: we are better when we know a person's name and his aspect!

The Taung child (Australopithecus africanus) is a fundamental fossil in the history of Paleoanthropology. Discovered by Raymond Dart at Taung, South Africa, in 1924, the find consisted of the entire face, including teeth and jaws, and the endocranial cast of the brain. Dated between 2 and 3 million of years ago, the child was about 3 years old and had a cranial capacity of 410 cc, which would have been 440 cc in adulthood.

The fossil surprised the discoverer for the modernity of some of its features: the large and "rounded" brain, the small canines, different from those of apes, and especially the relatively advanced position of the foramen magnum compatible with bipedalism.

The cast of this fossil is in many museums around the world, and it's the evidence of the evolutionary history of our species. The Museum of Anthropology at the University of Padua keeps three copies of this find, along with those of many other Hominins.

When I was approached to join the "Taung" project, the first feeling was that of curiosity: I could finally know how the face of the child looked like, whose fossilized skull was in the closet behind my desk!

The curiosity was fueled by the various progresses of the work of Arc-Team that reached me through dr. Moreno Tiziani. Since a few weeks, the strictly scientific work of the team gave a face to the Taung child.

As an anthropologist and a curator of a museum, this result is very important. All the museography linked to human evolution is moving for some time to make our ancestors more human, taking away from the head the mistaken belief of the oneness of our humanity. There were many ways of being "human" and there have been many attempts to reach humanity. The Taung child is fully embedded in this story.

The times when the French paleontologist Marcellin Boule, between 1911 and 1913, reconstructing erroneously the skeleton of the Neanderthal of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, removed him from humanity because incapable, because of its anatomy, to "raise his eyes to heaven", are really far.

Today, thanks to the dedicated work of many scholars such as Arc-Team, when I open the closet behind my desk it's nice to see a familiar face.

Padua, december 4, 2012
Nicola Carrara

Translation: Moreno Tiziani

July 27, 2011 - July 27, 2012: a year of ATOR

Hello all,

today ATOR reaches its first year, so I thought to post and analyze some statistics to see how this experiment of shared research is progressing.

Until now we have six active authors, who wrote 79 posts. The community reacted with 96 comments, although most of them are written by the authors in response to direct questions from readers. Overall the blog counted 21484 visits (8695 visits since the activation of the Revolver Maps plugin, as you can see in the image below).

Today ATOR has 25 members and the general trend is still growing, but sinlge posts may affect the statistics with an increase of visitors related both to the quality of the post and to the interest aroused by the topic. A good example of this situation is the post of Cicero Moraes about forensic facial reconstruction, which has captured the attention of the community of 3D modelers and of physical anthropologists, reching the peak traffic you can see in June 2012 in the graph below.

The post reached also the attention of Ton Roosendaal (original creator of Blender), who wrote a tweet about it:

Anyway, the main strength of ATOR and of an open approach to research remains the active collaboration between researchers operating in different fields (not only archaeologists). In this case must be placed, for example, the new collaborations with the 3D artist Cicero Moraes (already mentioned) and with the anthropologist Moreno Tiziani, creator of anthropological association Antrocom Onlus, which publishes the Online Journal of Anthropology. 
We will go on working with this open philosopy in archaeology, inspired by the Free/Libre and Open Source Software movement, and to further increase the quality of posts in ATOR with the help of the community. As usual, if you want to collaborate, just contact us! 
Thank you.