[Facial reconstruction: the history of a challenge]

In our society, there is a social, cultural and legal obligation to identify cadavers. If all other techniques fail to produce a presumed identity for a very deteriorated body, facial reconstruction can be the last resort. Historically, the first attempts in the XIXth century concerned famous men. Anatomists, anthropologists, and embryologists established the basic principles of the method. Paleontologists then tried to reconstruct the face of prehistoric men. For the first time in the XXth century, the Russian school, directly inspired by the American school began work concerning the victims of crimes. The development of photography, the discovery of X-rays and progress in imaging and data processing, then the development of the CT scan have all contributed to this still experimental method.