From Gregory Paul, a freelance paleontologist, researcher, and artist:
The Shroud of Turin is again on short-term display. When I first saw it many years ago, I immediately realized it was a fake because of gross errors in the image. Yet many continue to believe it is the actual burial shroud of Jesus, encouraged by a body of pro-shroud researchers who were allowed to present their case without rebuttal in a two-hour cable documentary timed to coincide with the exhibition. The Catholic Church had long maintained a neutral position on the nature of the object, but according to the Associated Press, the pope has now endorsed the shroud as a photographic image of the crucified Christ, which is already encouraging belief that the shroud is what it seems to be.
Unfortunately, Pope Benedict did so just before I posted an analysis that shows that, although they do not know it, he and other shroud advocates are in effect proposing that Jesus was pathologically hypocephalic. This embarrassing mistake
is occurring even though it has long been understood that the image’s body is too long relative to the head. Having done some work on the evolution of brain size, I realized a few weeks ago that that if this is because the head is too small, then the brain has to be undersized. The results of calculations confirm that the brain volume of the shroud image would have been well below human norms, and in the range of ancient Homo erectus. This awkward defect of the image has yet to be noticed.
The actual explanation for the deformity is that the shroud is a Gothic forgery, small heads being a standard artistic convention of the time, and radiometric dating places the cloth at that period. Hopefully, the results of this analysis will make a major contribution to finally discrediting the validity of the notorious shroud.
