Showing posts with label hobbit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hobbit. Show all posts

Thursday, 13 August 2015

Homo floresiensis

"Homo floresiensis ("Flores Man"; nicknamed "hobbit" and "Flo") is widely believed to be an extinct species in the genus Homo. The remains of an individual that would have stood about 3.5 feet (1.1 m) in height were discovered in 2003 on the island of Flores in Indonesia. Partial skeletons of nine individuals have been recovered, including one complete skull, referred to as LB1"

This is the incipit of the Wikipedia page dedicate to the Homo floresiensis. I started the post with this sentence because today I will share the result of our research about Archaeological Foresic Facial Reconstruction (AFFR) of the individual LB1 of this species, performed for the open source exhibition "Facce. I molti volti della storia umana". If you are a regular reader of tis blog, you will know that we attempted already a facial reconstruction of the "hobbit", as he was one oh the Hominini we worked on for the Brazilian exposition "Faces de Evolução" (curated by Prof. Dr. Moacir Elias Santos of the Archaeological Museum of Ponta Grossa and Prof. Esp. Vivian Tedardi of Rosicrucian and Egyptian Museum in Brazil). Like it happened for the Taung Child (Australopithecus africanus), also in this case we developed a new model (v 2.0), after a first reconstruction, simply based on a an anatomical study and on basic paleo-artistic techniques.
Here below you can see the image of the first reconstructive model (H. floresiensis v. 1.0), while here you can read the old ATOR post about this first attempt.

Homo floresiensis version 1.0

After the first model, we changed completely our approach to paleo-art, as we developed the new technique based on the anatomical deformation of Pan troglodytes or Homo sapiens ct x-ray scan (depending of the kind of hominid to be reconstructed). The result of this new approach is the H. floresiensis new model (v. 2.0) we release today and that you can see in the image below.

Homo floresiensis version 2.0

Also in this case, the model is the result of a team work. Here below are the credits:

1. 3D scan of the cast: Moacir Elias Santos (Archaeological Museum of Ponta Grossa)
2. 3D modeling (skull restoration, anatomical study, CT deformation): +Cícero Moraes (Arc-Team) with the precious contribute of Prof. Peter Brown (New England University in Armidale, Australia)
3. scientific validation: Prof. Telmo Pievani (University of Padua, Department of Biology), Dott. Nicola Carrara(Anthropological Museum of the University of Padua), Prof. Peter Brown (New England University in Armidale, Australia)
The image of the new model of Homo floresiensis has just been added on Wikimedia Commons and it is avalible for any use under the CC-BY license (which we use normally for the material we share through ATOR).
Have a nice day!

Tuesday, 12 March 2013

Homo floresiensis - 3D forensic facial reconstruction of the "hobbit"

Second Wikipedia:

Homo floresiensis ("Flores Man", nicknamed "hobbit" and "Flo") is a possible species, now extinct, in the genus Homo. The remains of an individual were discovered in 2003 on the island of Flores in Indonesia. Partial skeletons of nine individuals have been recovered, including one complete cranium (skull).These remains have been the subject of intense research to determine whether they represent a species distinct from modern humans, and the progress of this scientific controversy has been closely followed by the news media at large. This hominin is remarkable for its small body and brain and for its survival until relatively recent times (possibly as recently as 12,000 years ago).


Some months ago a forensic facial reconstruction of the "hobbit" was presented in the web.


I liked very much of this and decided create a version to a exposure about human evolution that will happen here in Brazil.


I was not able to find a 3D reconstructed skull on the web, but fortunately I found two ortogonal rotating video in this link: www-personal.une.edu.au/~pbrown3/ (thank you mr. Peter Brown!)

To reconstruct the skull I converted the videos in a image sequence with FFMPEG:

$ ffmpeg -i Input_video.avi -sameq Output_directory/%04d.jpg

After that I imported ten images in Inkscape and I converted the bitmap in vector (Shift + Alt +B).





So, I placed the "slices" in their positions, and I made a extrusion by rotating.

With this I had the basic shape of the skull to continue, this time, with the sculpting process.



If you wanna see the entire process, please look this album: http://plus.google.com/photos/115430171389306289690/albums/5853884703716365057

If you wanna download the .ply file, visit this link:


I cannot forget to thank Dr. Paulo Miamoto to help me with the modeling of the teeth.

I hope you enjoy.

A big hug and I see you in the next!


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