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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 14 May 2026 at 6:13pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply
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But every time I see something like this I am reminded that there is nothing on a skull that conveys the size and shape of the nose or eyes, or the shape or fullness of the lips.

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Michael Penn
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Joined: 12 April 2006
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Posted: 14 May 2026 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply
I would love to see a test of those who engage in this kind of speculative reconstruction wherein they were "blindly" given skulls of known, photographed living visages and asked to do their best to work, just to see how close -- or far -- they would come.
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Vinny Valenti
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Posted: 14 May 2026 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply
Right! Or when they extrapolate how a child that went missing long ago would look as an adult today. Definitely an extremely sad use case, but it's pretty simple to check on the accuracy by providing childhood photos of current adults.
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Jozef Brandt
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Posted: 15 May 2026 at 1:13am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

I remember when I saw the movie Gorky Park for the first time, there's a whole subplot where the forensic pathologist is doing that very thing with a skull, and I couldn't figure out how it made the leap to external characteristics back then, and it still doesn't make sense to me now.
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James Woodcock
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Posted: 15 May 2026 at 4:36am | IP Logged | 5 post reply
I would definitely like to see those types of use cases. For all I know, they
might exist, I have no knowledge if the field.
I do know my bones do not determine my fat level, and my face, while
having continuity between its thin and fat phases, looks different between
those phases. My bones do not give an indication, as far as I know, which of
those phases I am in.
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James Best
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Posted: 15 May 2026 at 4:43am | IP Logged | 6 post reply
I will echo Jozef in that it was while watching the 1983 film Gorky Park that I was first exposed to the concept of facial reconstruction. The subplot was blended very smoothly into the film so I really didn't notice its technical flaws.

It also took me a while to realize that the actor in Gorky Park playing the scientist who does the facial reconstruction is Ian McDiarmid, better known to Star Wars fans for his portrayal of Emperor Palpatine. In hindsight that should have been a huge red flag :-) 


Edited by James Best on 15 May 2026 at 3:30pm
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