China unveils facial recovery of ancient human skulls

WUHAN -- The restored statues of a pair of fossil human skulls, dating back to one million years ago, were unveiled by the Hubei Provincial Museum in central China on Thursday.

Two sets of ancient fossil human skulls were unearthed in 1989 and 1990 in Hubei province. In 1994, paleoanthropologist Jia Lanpo named the fossils "Yunxian Man" after the location where they were excavated.

The analysis concluded that the fossils belonged to Homo erectus and are roughly one million years old, and they were from a male and a female aged between 25 and 45.

The brain volumes of the fossil skulls were 1,094 milliliters and 1,152 milliliters.

The researchers from the Hubei Provincial Museum, Shanxi University, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan University, and Beijing Union University accurately reconstructed the fossil skull models using high-precision industrial scanners.

They used the modeling techniques such as sculpture, painting and computer images to restore the faces of the skulls, including eyes, noses, mouths, ears, skin and hair.

The "Yunxian Man" fossil human skulls are the most complete ones found in Eurasia for the same era, providing key evidence for the study of the evolution of Homo erectus in East Asia, according to the Science and Technology Daily on Thursday.