Smithsonian Museum of Natural History Hall of Human Origins

Starting with a cast skull, artist John Gurche builds layers of muscle, fat, and skin to create hyper-realistic busts of human ancestors for the museum. Pictured:Australopithecus afarensis, which lived about 3.3 million years ago.

Another bust, this one of Homo neanderthalensis, which lived from about 200,000 years ago to as recently as 28,000 years ago.

This 30,000-year-old handprint from Chauvet Cave in France was made by mixing pigment with saliva inside the mouth and blowing the mixture onto a cave wall.  It is featured in the exhibit

Five fossil human skulls show how the shape of the face and braincase of early humans changed over the past 2.5 million years. (from left to right: Australopithecus africanus, 2.5 million years old; Homo rudolfensis, 1.9 million years old;  Homo erectus, ~ 1 million years old;Homo heidelbergensis, ~350,000 years old;  Homo sapiens, ~ 4,800 years old)