Portrait of an 8-year-old boy who lived 30,000 years ago

Experts have successfully reconstructed the face of a Neanderthal boy with some characteristics such as an upturned nose, from a skull found in a cave in Uzbekistan.

A team of scientists from Jilin University (China) and Moscow State University (Russia) reconstructed the face of an 8-year-old Neanderthal boy who died more than 30,000 years ago from a skull found in 1938, Mail reported on January 19.

This is the first three-dimensional reconstruction of a Neanderthal skull fossil, showing the boy with an upturned nose. The skull is also the first Neanderthal fossil discovered in Asia and the only complete Asian Neanderthal skull fossil preserved to date.

The researchers believe the reconstruction reveals the facial shape of prehistoric humans in Eurasia and exhibits morphological features of Neanderthals in Central Asia.

The skull, named Teshik-Tash 1 , was found in a shallow pit in the Teshik-Tash Cave in Uzbekistan along with five pairs of Siberian ibex horn cores and bird bones, suggesting the boy was buried in some ancient ritual.

However, it was not until 2021 that researchers from the Max Planck Institute identified the boy as a Neanderthal. The team analyzed the frontal bone and said that the shape matched that of Neanderthal skulls previously recorded.

DNA analysis also showed that Teshik-Tash 1 carried Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA. He was about 8 years old, meaning he was physically mature enough to exhibit Neanderthal features such as a large face and nose, a long and low skull, an undefined lower jaw, and prominent brow ridges.

The original skull was reconstructed from about 150 fragments. The team from Jilin University and Moscow State University uploaded scans of the skull and filled in the missing pieces, then covered the boy's muscles, skin and completed his facial features.

"The fossils of Neanderthals - extinct relatives of modern humans - were first discovered in the Neanderthal Valley, Germany, and once lived widely in Eurasia," said Zhang Quanchao, head of the research team at Jilin University.

Experts once thought Neanderthals lived in Europe only during the last ice age, but a 2015 University of Washington study found they may have traveled farther east and lived alongside modern humans there for longer than scientists previously thought.