PARIS (AFP) - - Men tend to wind up with life partners who look like their mother, while a woman is lured to a partner who looks like her father, scientists reported on Wednesday.

Heterosexuals are deeply attracted to individuals whose faces are similar to that of their opposite-sex parent, they said, suggesting that this characteristic is rooted in an evolutionary drive.

The researchers found a significant correlation in facial similarities between a woman's mate and her father, and also between a man's partner and his mother.

Interestingly, men and women focused on different parts of the face when they home in on a potential mate, they found.

A man's lover and his mother tended to have similar fullness in the lips, width of mouth, as well as length and width of jaw.
But for women, the critical features were the distance between mouth and brow, the
height of the face, distance between the eyes and the size of a man's nose.

"Human couples who are similar in physical and psychological characteristics are more likely to remain together than dissimilar partners, possibly leading to an increase in fertility," the study concludes.