Essentially, anatomical reconstruction follows the principles of traditional physical reconstruction using anatomical clues to reconstruct a biological form.
It is mainly aspects of symmetry, curvature smoothness and the fitting of edges or surface texture that guide the re-assembly. However, in contrast to the physical approach, missing parts can be reproduced if they are preserved at least on one side of a bilateral form, and the process can be repeated several times by several experimenters without harming the original.