Perhaps inbreeding among painters was causing an inability to paint a normal jaw. :)

The jaw, nose and lip were just the outward and visible signs. Mental retardation, hemophilia and other physical ailments spread by inbreeding have had much more direct effects on ruling dynasties. (Inbreeding also tends toward infertility, as many defective embryos don't survive to birth. Which causes additional interesting dynastic issues.)

Cue the Wrong-wing Science doubters. We HAVE to do something about those people... the more they delay, and muddy the waters of public opinion, the more people die, the more money gets spent on things that would be unnecessary had the public been told the truth from day one.

These doubters are killing people. They have as much blood on their hands as the oil corporations.

" . . . inbreeding is still common in some geographical regions and among some religious and ethnic groups, so it’s important today to investigate the effects, "

Yes - and they add lots of expense to the healthcare burden we all bear.

If you walk through the art gallery and look at 16th century paintings, most of the people look like this!

What's new about this? The Hapsburg inbreeding has been known for a long time, and the facial deformities in these paintings have also been pointed to as evidence of the problems caused by their inbreeding. What would be very definitive is digging up some of their bones and taking samples for DNA analysis.

Ah, the royal bloodlines, and their idiosyncracies. As the centuries passed, they ran out of matchmaking options, and began to suffer any number of abnormalities in birth defects. So Prince Andrew may have a solid excuse after all. He's a royal d*ckhead. ;)

OK, fine... but you can't blame their genes for the dodgy moustache, surely?!

This isn't new. This was the topic of lecture of more than a few dental school lectures over a decade ago and I'm sure it wasn't news then either. So, this time, they got OMFS surgeons to give the paintings scores and now it's "quantifiable evidence" or something? Meh.

It's a little bit like saying, "We need to confirm that most of the world sees the sky as blue, so lets send out surveys, because, you can never be too sure..."

Does anybody else see Joe Bonamassa, (great guitar player), when they look at the protrait of Philip IV of Spain?