PHILIPPE PLAILLY / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY PHILIPPE PLAILLY / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
CT scanning of a Neanderthal skull. A fossil skull being scanned in a CT (Computed Tomography) scanner. Pieces of a Neanderthal child's skull found at Devil's Tower in Gibraltar in 1926 are being scanned, together with a modern human skull. This research at the Anthropologisches Institut, University of Zurich, Switzerland, provides a method of analysing fossil skulls. CT scanning of skull fragments enables three-dimensional (3-D) reconstructions of a fossil skull to be made from 2-D scans of the kind seen here. The pieces can be fitted together, restored and measured on screen, and the computer can reconstruct missing pieces.
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