It’s based on forensic measurements of skeletal remains.
It’s been used by police all over the world for decades.............
So there is some demonstrable success that has been correlated in modern times with actual skeletal remains compared to known living photos or video.
I recall seeing stories about success of “aging” done speculatively with photos of missing crime suspects, to simulate what they might now look like in appearance and help catch them. I wondered if this was an analogue branch of that. Thanks.
Police reconstructions often match pretty closely the faces of photographs of the people when alive. And no the photos were not available to make the reconstruction. The photos were located once ID had been made from the reconstruction.