Teen girl who died 500 years ago ‘brought back from dead’ by forensic artists using ‘skull found under church toilet’

 Teen girl who died 500 years ago ‘brought back from dead’ by forensic artists using ‘skull found under church toilet’

THE face of a teenager who died around 500 years ago has been recreated in stunning detail by forensic artists.

Experts based the face on a skull found under a church toilet on Jersey, belonging to a young girl aged 15.

One of the archaeologists working on the project said it was like the girl had been “brought back to life”.

The skull is named SK43, because it was the 43rd skeleton dug up during the construction of a new toilet at St Lawrence Church, Jersey.

Of 50 bodies total, this was only skull that was completely intact – a rare find, according to experts.

“Normally when you dig up a skull, because of the void inside the pressure from the soil makes the skull collapse,” said archaeologist Rosalind Le Quesne.

When we started excavating her, the further down I got, I realised actually that she was intact.

“Her teeth had come out, but I did manage to find them all by sieving the soil around her.

“So we managed to get all the teeth as well.”

After finding the skull, the girl’s head and shoulders were removed for analysis.

Experts measured 25 points on her skull to learn about her gender, age and race.

They also tracked down details about her diet to produce a visual mock-up of what she may have looked like.

Forensic artist Tim Widden, of London, was then recruited to build the final design.

“You can really see that actually her features do fit with what was going on with the bone structure underneath,” said Rosalind.

“I thought that her face looked a bit sad because her eyes are kind of turned down.

“But then if you look at the skull you can see that the eye sockets actually do turn down, so that is what she looked like.”

Experts typically use this kind of facial reconstruction software to help “age” missing people.

But it can also give a valuable insight in to our past, revealing new details about what our distant ancestors looked like.

“It’s amazing that somebody who died so long ago has actually been sort of brought back to life and we’ve seen her,” Rosalind said.

“And also felt sad for her…that she died young.

“So I’m sure that like her family and friends back then would never imagine that so far in the future there’d be another group of people who are mourning her loss as well.”

Archaeologists working on the project have promised to re-bury all removed bones, sticking to local customs in the 1500s.