This method, which Gerasimov pioneered and which has since been refined by researchers around the world, has been used to reconstruct the faces of historical figures and prehistoric individuals whose physical appearance would otherwise be completely unknown.

His work at Mal’ta was the beginning of a career that spanned decades and encompassed excavations at multiple major sites.

The publication of the Mal’ta findings, and the establishment of the Mal’ta-Buret’ cultural complex as a significant horizon in Upper Paleolithic Siberian archaeology, owed much to his early efforts and his understanding of what the site represented.

Gerasimov did not live to see the DNA analysis of the child whose burial he helped to excavate.

He died in 1970, more than forty years before the 2013 publication that would transform the significance of his most famous excavation.