Envisioning Paranthropus: A Brief History of Paleoart and an Approach to Photorealistic Reconstruction of This Enigmatic Lineage
摘要
The Paranthropus species were remarkable. Although our other hominin ancestors generally span morphospace between us and our closest living relatives, these “robust” australopiths had craniodental adaptationsAdaptation that were more extreme. In this chapter, we depict photorealistic visualizations of key specimens of these taxa and describe the process of creating these visualizations and the history of “paleoart” from early depictions of Mesozoic species to modern depictions of our hominin ancestors. Reconstructions of P. boisei, P. aethiopicus, and P. robustus were created in Photoshop by morphing and combining photographs of PanPan (the extant taxon that fits best to the Paranthropus morphologyMorphology) with some Gorilla and H. sapiens supplementing this. The end results look rather like robust chimpanzees; however, the white sclera (chosen because of a combination of current functional hypotheses and artistic license) impart palpable humanity, while some aspects of the jaws, brows, and neurocranial configuration appear dissimilar to those of extant hominins.