She Has Been Dead For 45,000 Years. In 2026, Three Different Scientists Gave Her Three Different Faces — And Each One Revealed Something The Others Missed
Different databases would produce different results.
The use of a modern French reference database is a methodological choice with potentially significant consequences for the result when the subject is an ancient individual from a population that differs substantially from modern French people.
The Formal Comparison: Geometric Morphometrics
After the three reconstructions were produced — independently, with each team working from the skull and genome data without seeing the others’ results — the Velemínská team conducted a formal comparison using geometric morphometrics.
This comparison is the methodological heart of the 2026 paper and the part that distinguishes it most clearly from previous reconstruction studies.