A Neanderthal skull that was crushed to bits 75,000 years ago has been pieced back together and used to recreate the face of a wise-looking archaic woman with dark, flowing hair.
Archaeologists painstakingly pieced together the skull of the individual, who researchers have named Shanidar Z, from hundreds of flattened bone fragments discovered inside Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2018. Her skull is believed to have been crushed shortly after her death, possibly by rockfall, and then compacted by tens of thousands of years of sediment.
