RT Journal Article
T1 Virtual excavation and analysis of the early Neanderthal cranium from Altamura (Italy).
A1 Profico, Antonio
A1 Buzi, Costantino
A1 Di Vincenzo, Fabio
A1 Boggioni, Marco
A1 Borsato, Andrea
A1 Boschian, Giovanni
A1 Marchi, Damiano
A1 Micheli, Mario
A1 Cecchi, Jacopo Moggi
A1 Samadelli, Marco
A1 Tafuri, Mary Anne
A1 Arsuaga Ferreras, Juan Luis
A1 Manzi, Giorgio
AB Complete Neanderthal skeletons are almost unique findings. A very well-preserved specimen of this kind was discovered in 1993 in the deepest recesses of a karstic system near the town of Altamura in Southern Italy. We present here a detailed description of the cranium, after we virtually extracted it from the surrounding stalagmites and stalactites. The morphology of the Altamura cranium fits within the Neanderthal variability, though it retains features occurring in more archaic European samples. Some of these features were never observed in Homo neanderthalensis, i.e. in fossil specimens dated between 300 and 40 ka. Considering the U-Th age we previously obtained (>130 ka), the morphology of Altamura suggests that the archaic traits it retains may have been originated by geographic isolation of the early Neanderthal populations from Southern Italy.
PB Nature Research
SN 2399-3642
YR 2023
FD 2023
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/72180
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/72180
LA eng
NO The online version contains supplementary materialavailable at https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-04644-1.
NO Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research
DS Docta Complutense
RD 15 abr 2025