Meet Shanidar Z: Scientists recreate the face of a female Neanderthal whose head was FLATTENED during a rock slide 75,000 years ago [Video]

19:01 EDT 01 May 2024, updated 19:04 EDT 01 May 2024

Around 75,000 years ago, a middle-aged Neanderthal woman was buried in a cave in the foothills of Iraq.

Now, thanks to a dedicated team of archaeologists, her face can be revealed for the first time.

Named Shanidar Z, her skeleton had been buried by tens of thousands of years of sediment before first being uncovered in 2018.

When experts from Cambridge University and Liverpool John Moores first discovered her skull, it had been flattened to around 2cm thick.

It had been crushed, possibly by rockfall, relatively soon after death, meaning more than 200 pieces were pieced together freehand to return it to its original shape.