We
have always found it amazing that the children willingly and jokingly
posed for pictures when they had their heads shaved in 1917! The
oddity, and also the blessing, is that getting the measles and having
their heads shaved has proved most helpful 80 years later when trying
to figure out who matches which skull. The following photographs
on this page can be viewed as HIGHLY offensive.. we will be the
first to admit that we're no experts.. just driven by curiousity
and a desire to discover the truth. We created overlays of Maria
and Tatiana's faces with one of the skulls belonging to the remains
in question. These pictures were certainly not fun to do, yet curiosity
got the better of us. We wanted to see who this skull, belonging
to the sixth set of remains, best sizes up to.. but last thing we
want to do is upset anyone. So please proceed with the warning that
this is not for people that may be weak stomached.
~Lishka~
The photo of the skull on the left comes from
Peter Kurth's TSAR: The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra.
It is cropped from a picture of the three female Romanov skulls
on page 217. On the far left of the picture is the skull which
belonged to the Empress Alexandra. On the far right is the skull
of Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna. The middle skull is our skull
in question. It is not so easy to detect in this picture, but
when they first saw this skull the face was badly battered. The
Russians had the task of piecing the facial bones back together.
The Russians had labored manfully
over Body No. 6, attempting to restore its facial bones with generous
dollops of glue, stretched across wide gaps. They had been forced
to estimate over and over again, while reassembling these fragments,
almost none of which were touching each other in the reconstruction.
~Dr. William Maples~
Maples said it was only the facial portions
of the skull that was reconstructed. The upper cranial portion was
already in tact, as well as the jaw. We did try to limit our comparisons
to the portions that seemed the most originally together. After
we studied the shape of Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia's heads, and
compared their proportions with that of No. 6. Maria shared the
most similar points of identification with this skull.