Elisabeth Daynès, born 1960 in
BéziersBéziers is a town in Languedoc in southern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the Hérault department. Béziers hosts the famous Feria de Béziers, centred around bullfighting, every August. A million visitors are attracted to the five-day event...
, is a French sculptor. In 1981 she worked with the Théâtre de la Salamandre in
LilleLille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...
creating masks for the theatre. In 1984, she founded her own studio, Atelier Daynès, in Paris. Some years later, the Thot Museum in
MontignacMontignac is a commune in the Dordogne department in Aquitaine in southwestern France. It is situated on the Vézère river.-Population:-Sights:...
, close to the
Lascaux cavesLascaux is the setting of a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its Paleolithic cave paintings. The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the department of Dordogne. They contain some of the best-known Upper Paleolithic art. These paintings are estimated to be...
, asked her to sculpt a life size woolly Mammoth with a group of hominids.
She has sinced specialised in reconstructing hominids from remaining bones. Her work is present at museums all over the world, like
Musée des MerveillesMusée des Merveilles in Tende in France is a museum that documents stone age and other historic artefacts from the Mercantour National Park. It opened in 1996. There is notably a large collection of real and reproduced petroglyphs from the surroundings of the nearby Bégo Mountain.The museum's name...
in
TendeTende is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France.-Geography:Tende is located within Mercantour National Park in the French Alps. The mountainous commune is bordered by Italy to the north, with the boundary determined by the watershed line between the two countries...
,
Field Museum of Natural HistoryThe Field Museum of Natural History is located in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It sits on Lake Shore Drive next to Lake Michigan, part of a scenic complex known as the Museum Campus Chicago...
in
ChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
,
Transvaal Museum""The Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, formerly Transvaal Museum, is a natural history museum situated in Pretoria, South Africa....
in
PretoriaPretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...
and
Naturhistoriska riksmuseetThe Swedish Museum of Natural History , in Stockholm, is one of two major museums of natural history in Sweden, the other one being located in Gothenburg....
in
StockholmStockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
. One of her most notable sculptures is at the Krapina Neaderthal Museum in northern Croatia where she made an outstanding reconstruction of an entire seventeen member Neanderthal family. In 2005 she created a life like model of Pharaoh
TutankhamunTutankhamun , Egyptian , ; approx. 1341 BC – 1323 BC) was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty , during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom...
in a project with National Geographic. A close resemblance with the real Pharaoh is likely, even though traits like ears, nose tip, and colour of skin and eyes cannot be reliably reconstructed.