Society is working with the team that reconstructed the face of Richard III

The appearance of the last Plantagenet monarch, who died 528 years ago, has been brought back to life by a team of Dundee scientists. This is the same team that Society is currently helping to appoint a Principal Anatomist. 

Although King Richard's bones were famously unearthed in a Leicester car park, the facial model that has recently been splashed across the newspapers all around the world was actually made in Scotland. The University of Dundee's CAHID (Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification) is an internationally renowned for the quality of its research in this area.

CAHID have been able to create a model in which about 70% of the facial surface should have less than 2mm of error. Even features that one would assume lost for all time, such as the shape of Richard's brows, cheeks and nose, can be estimated with impressive accuracy. The only parts that really boil down to guesswork are his ears and the general amount of flesh.

The technique of facial sculpture was first pioneered around 50 years ago by the Soviet archaeologist Mikhail Gerasimov, who used it to recreate the face of Ivan the Terrible. It has since become familiar to the world through crime investigations, as a way of identifying human remains.
Luckily, Richard's bones were well-preserved, thanks to the soil having low acidity and few bugs. Remarkably though, the team behind the reconstruction never even touched the bones. Instead they were sent CT scans and photographs of the skull, which they then manipulated with a computer programme called Geomagic Freeform.

The facial reconstruction team was led by Caroline Wilkinson, Professor of Craniofacial Identification in CAHID.

"It was a great privilege for us all in the Dundee team to work on this important investigation." said Professor Wilkinson. "It has been enormously exciting to rebuild and visualise the face that could be Richard III, and this depiction may allow us to see the King in a different light."

To learn more about Society's current work with CAHID, please click here, or visit their website at www.lifesci.dundee.ac.uk/cahid.