Functional genomics — the analysis of which genes were expressed in which ways in an ancient individual — is an emerging frontier.

Current ancient DNA analysis focuses primarily on identifying which variants an individual carried at specific loci.

Future analyses may be able to say more about which developmental pathways were active, which may in turn allow finer inferences about physical characteristics.

The precision of pigmentation inferences, for instance, may improve as the functional genetics of skin pigmentation are better understood.

For facial reconstruction, the development of more comprehensive reference databases — databases that include ancient individuals or that model the morphological variation of deep-time populations — would address one of the key limitations of computational methods like AFA3D.

If the reference database better represents the range of skull-face relationships that existed in Upper Paleolithic Europe, the algorithmic approach should produce results more closely approximating ancient individuals’ actual faces.