What I was kind of asking for was a scientific study - that block of text is only as reliable as its source - which is not cited I was pointing out that they are not making a claim based on anything really, they are more like pointing out the obvious.     OMG,..I know what you're saying,..there is this photo of a girl on the cover of a book who's 15 and I looked almost the same when I was 15,..I was stunned! I bought the book just because of that,..I think I might email the author and inquire who that is,..although that might sound weird. The girl on the cover is less tanned than me with a different nose,..I'd say that's about it. This article has officially inspired me to just go ahead and email the author and just comment that I think it's interesting we look so much alike. For privacy reasons, I'm not going to post a comparison here but I would've liked to because the similarity is closer than my sister or any relative  On that note, I don't understand,..does that mean this girl has closer genetic makeup to me than my family? I'm really puzzled by this because she seems to be from some Northern European country since she's fairer skinned and the author's last name is Scandinavian I believe, the story also takes place in the U.S., so I'm putting all this together,..but this has really baffled me because our looks are really similar,.our eyes are very similar, shape of eyebrows and the distance between our eyes and eyebrows,..we both have a similar face shape and she has light brown hair and so do I. Her expression looks a lot like mine,..my mom even said she looks more like me than my sister! If people could reply to me what they think is going on genetic wise that would be great because I don't get how we're not related. I'm guessing it could happen that she's genetically more similar to you than any other of your relatives.    Let's say your DNA its 99% identical to every other human (here is coded the basic functions that make you human) another 0,5% is race specific, another 0,2% is ethnic group specific, another 0,1% is specific for your family (everything that runs in the family) and 0,1% are your own identity and personal mutations.    (the percentages are educated guesses)    Every of these proportions is not a hard coded trait, it's more like ranges in which a trait can manifest, for example:    * in the 99% we could have the body hair distribution that ranges from someone with little body hair to a really shaggy person.  * in the 0,5% race specific, we could have hair color, in whites you have all the range of hair colors while in the other races is limited to black and brown.  * in the 0,2% ethnic specific, we could have let's say that for Russians a specific cranial feature goes between a specific range.  * in the 0,1% family specific, you could have that the shape of your left ear is kind of pointy but varies between a range of pointiness.  * in the 0,1% individual specific, you could have adjustments or mutations that affect the lower or upper limits of the ranges you have inherited so you develop little variations that make you unique.    Every of these ranges are not necessarily exclusive, for example the range for the width of the cheek bones of an Asian could be from 20cm to 25cm while the range for a White could be from 17cm to 22cm, the ranges cross!! that's why you see Asians that don't look so Asian and you see whites that looks Orientalish, you're seeing individuals in the extremes of the ranges!    In the same sense it is quite plausible to find among the billions of combinations a case like the one you comment between you and the girl in the picture.