With her sloping, heavily-ridged brow and jutting jaw, she may not exactly be the face that launched a thousand ships by today's standards, but museum curators in China are heralding the reconstructed features of a female homo erectus as some of the most alluring ever found in ancient humans. 

Like Us on Facebook

"Many of the clues to her facial features were perfectly preserved when her skull was found and there is no doubt that in her time she would have been considered highly desirable," explained Guo Tsou of the Tangshan Homo Erectus Fossil Site Museum in Nanjing.

Thanks to the near perfect preservation of the bones constituting her face, forensic anthropologists were able to recreate a three-dimensional bust of how the ancient woman, suspected to be between 21 and 35 years old when she died, would have appeared to modern viewers. The results are surprisingly aesthetic, with outlets heralding the woman as a "hottie."

Along with the facial reconstruction, scientists also constructed a full-body model of the woman, who is around 600,000 years old. Homo erectus, Latin for "man who stands upright," first appears on the fossil record 1.89 million years ago in Africa, and persisted until about 143,000 years ago. The species is marked by such aspects as permanent bipedalism, tool usage, and the possible taming of fire. Homo erectus fossils have also been found on the islands of modern day Indonesia, leading scientists to speculate early hominids mastered seafaring technology much earlier than previously thought. Ancient human populations migrated in a series of waves out of the original African homeland, spreading over the Middle East and India before reaching China and East Asia a little over a million years ago. 

The remains of a male homo erectus were also found with the woman, but in much worse condition. As only a part of his cranium and forehead (whose thicknesses indicate his gender) were uncovered, archaeologists are at a lost as to what he may have looked like, but it has not stifled conjecture that the pair were a couple and died together in some long-lost tragedy. 

Dubbed "Tangshan ape-man exhibit 1," the reconstructed female is proving to be the museum's star exhibit.  

TagsHomo erectus, hottie, Tangshan, Archaeology, anthropology, Nanjing