Nowadays there is hardly a natural history museum without a fully-fledged reconstruction of a hominid. Often it is a “Lucy”, the famous Australopithecus afarensis found in Ethiopia in 1974. More recently some museums even boast the “entire family”, i.e. a dozen or more three-dimensional reconstructions of different hominid species (full-body sculptures or busts). Two-dimensional renderings of Neanderthals or Homo erectus greet from the covers of National Geographic and other popular science magazines. But even in Science and Nature reports about new hominid finds in Africa or Asia are more often than not accompanied by a drawing of how this creature might have looked like.

The visualization of hominids have already received a good bit of scholarly attention. Moser, for example, pointed out that “the image is more than a summary of data, it is a document which contains a theory” (Moser 1992, 837). Moser (1998) also showed how limited (and stereotypical) the visual vocabulary in the rendering of early (“primitive”) humans was and still is.

Building on these scholarly works this paper aims at the concrete practice of this work with fossils. It is based in part on interviews with the paleoartists themselves, the paleoanthropologists and the curators of the museums who commissioned the reconstructions. Worldwide there are only very few paleoartists. Who are these people? What kind of training did they have? Do they perceive themselves as artists or as scientists?

The paper will explain how these sculptures are actually manufactured (“reversed dissection”). What methods do the paleoartists use? Soft tissue does not fossilize. How do the paleoartists fill the “gaps” of the paleontological record, e.g. hair and skin? How “speculative” are the drawings, busts and full-sized reconstructions of early humans? Which iconographic traditions influence the representations? Particular attention will be given to the collaboration between between the paleoartists and the paleoanthropologists supervising their work. How do they interact? And how do they resolve conflicts in the production process?

The field of human origins research is well known for its often heated phylogenetic debates. In how far are these controversies reflected in the reconstructions? Do the sculptures of an Australopithecus or a Homo erectus also influence the views of the researches themselves? The paper will argue that the paleoartists do in fact produce some kind of new knowledge.