For Shanidar Z, the reconstruction represents the best scientific estimate of what she might have looked like.

It is not a portrait in the way a photograph is a portrait.

It is a hypothesis made visible.

The ethical dimensions extend beyond accuracy.

When researchers and institutions present facial reconstructions, they are making choices about how to represent a person who cannot consent to that representation.

For a specimen 75,000 years old, the usual questions of informed consent obviously do not apply.

But the choices made in reconstruction — skin color, facial expression, overall presentation — carry implications about how the subject is being humanized or othered.