The ability to extract meaningful genetic data from medieval skeletal remains, to sequence fragments of ancient DNA, to compare them to reference populations, to make inferences about ancestry, developed over the 1990s and 2000s and became substantially more powerful in the 2010s with advances in next-generation sequencing.

The ancient DNA results for Conquest Man could not have been produced in 1985; the technology did not exist.

The isotope analysis techniques applied to his teeth also became more refined and more widely applied to archaeological specimens over the decades following the initial excavation.

The specific combination of oxygen and strontium isotope analysis that was used represents methods that have become standard tools in bioarchaeology over the past several decades.

The facial reconstruction, too, represents the application of techniques that have become more sophisticated and more accessible as computing power has increased and as forensic facial reconstruction has become more widely practiced.