Before the Emergence of Homo sapiens: Overview on the Early-to-Middle Pleistocene Fossil Record (with a Proposal about Homo heidelbergensis at the subspecific level)

The origin of H. sapiens has deep roots, which include two crucial nodes: (1) the emergence and diffusion of the last common ancestor of later Homo (in the Early Pleistocene) and (2) the tempo and mode of the appearance of distinct evolutionary lineages (in the Middle Pleistocene). The window between 1,000 and 500 thousand years before present appears of crucial importance, including the generation of a new and more encephalised kind of humanity, referred to by many authors as H. heidelbergensis. This species greatly diversified during the Middle Pleistocene up to the formation of new variants (i.e., incipient species) that, eventually, led to the allopatric speciation of H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens. The special case furnished by the calvarium found near Ceprano (Italy), dated to 430–385 ka, offers the opportunity to investigate this matter from an original perspective. It is proposed to separate the hypodigm of a single, widespread, and polymorphic human taxon of the Middle Pleistocene into distinct subspecies (i.e., incipient species). The ancestral one should be H. heidelbergensis, including specimens such as Ceprano and the mandible from Mauer

Il bike sharing di Milano: rapporto sullo sviluppo di un nuovo sistema di trasporto pubblico di successo

Il costante incremento del numero dei sistemi di bike-sharing pubblici adottati nelle maggiori città del mondo occidentale negli ultimi venti anni suggerisce che esso costituisce ormai una valida alternativa ai sistemi di trasporto tradizionali pubblici nelle aree urbane. Pur con qualche eccezione, essi hanno avuto in genere una buona ricezione tra i cittadini. Per un paese come l’Italia, con ingenti flussi di traffico urbano che si snodano nella maggior parte delle città entro reti stradali urbane spesso risalenti al medioevo o al Rinascimento, i sistemi pubblici di bike-sharing possono rappresentare un’ottima soluzione a disposizione dei cittadini per i loro tragitti. Questo studio si propone di presentare l’esempio di successo del bike-sharing “BikeMi” di Milano, per il quale sono stati riscontrati risultati significativi in termini di gradimento da parte dei cittadini che usufruiscono del servizio, dell’amministrazione comunale che lo fornisce e delle aziende private che ne gestiscono l’organizzazione. I dati analizzati sono relativi a tutti gli utilizzi delle biciclette rilevati durante i primi 5 anni di funzionamento del servizio. Per l’utente medio la bicicletta di BikeMi costituisce un vantaggio rispetto all’automobile sia in termini di velocità e di facilità di accesso nelle zone a traffico limitato o pedonali, sia per la maggiore distanza totale percorsa quotidianamente. Ulteriori vantaggi per l’utente sono il minor costo di spostamento e la maggiore disponibilità di percorsi alternativi anche durante gli orari di punta del traffico cittadino coincidenti con gli orari di inizio e fine delle attività lavorative. I maggiori snodi di traffico delle biciclette di BikeMi sono risultati quelli in cui è presente una stazione ferroviaria. Inoltre dai risultati si può notare una certa discrepanza di utilizzo del servizio tra la zona nord e la zona sud del centro a svantaggio della zona sud

Paleoneurology of an "early" Neandertal: endocranial size, shape, and features of Saccopastore 1

The Saccopastore 1 cranium was found near Rome in 1929, and its most probable age is about 120 ka (OIS 5e). The Neandertal morphology of the specimen was recognized just after the discovery by the Italian anthropologist S. Sergi, and subsequently confirmed by several authors. The present paper provides a complete description and analysis of the endocranial shape and features of this specimen, considering anatomical traits, metrics, and landmark data. The main endocranial diameters and the vascular traces resemble the morphology displayed by Middle Pleistocene humans, although lacking some traits described in the European samples referred to as ante-Neandertals. Nevertheless, proportions and endocranial shape support a definite Neandertal morphology, mostly taking into account the lateral development of the frontal lobes and the shape of the parietal areas. Therefore, it may be hypothesized that the Neandertal neurocranial architecture was present since at least OIS 5, as already suggested on the basis of ectocranial morphology

Filling the gap. Human cranial remains from Gombore II (Melka Kunture, Ethiopia; ca. 850 ka) and the origin of Homo heidelbergensis

African archaic humans dated to around 1,0 Ma share morphological affinities with Homo ergaster and appear distinct in cranio-dental morphology from those of the Middle Pleistocene that are referred to Homo heidelbergensis. This observation suggests a taxonomic and phylogenetic discontinuity in Africa that ranges across the Matuyama/Brunhes reversal (780 ka). Yet, the fossil record between roughly 900 and 600 ka is notoriously poor. In this context, the Early Stone Age site of Gombore II, in the Melka Kunture formation (Upper Awash, Ethiopia), provides a privileged case-study. In the Acheulean layer of Gombore II, somewhat more recent than 875±10 ka, two large cranial fragments were discovered in 1973 and 1975 respectively: a partial left parietal (Melka Kunture 1) and a right portion of the frontal bone (Melka Kunture 2), which probably belonged to the same cranium. We present here the first detailed description and computer-assisted reconstruction of the morphology of the cranial vault pertaining to these fossil fragments. Our analysis suggest that the human fossil specimen from Gombore II fills a phenetic gap between Homo ergaster and Homo heidelbergensis. This appears in agreement with the chronology of such a partial cranial vault, which therefore represents at present one of the best available candidates (if any) for the origin of Homo heidelbergensis in Africa

Homo sapiens in the Americas. Overview of the earliest human expansion in the new world

Although it is widely recognised that America was the last continent to be populated by our species, researchers' views on various aspects of this process (e.g. the period in which it occurred, the area from which the colonizing populations came, the number of dispersal waves and the routes taken by these migrations) differ significantly. In this paper, we review both classical data and more recent findings from various research fields - including geology, paleoecology, archaeology, skeletal biology, and genetics - that may shed light on the dynamics of the colonization of the American continent, according to a critical reappraisal of the various hypotheses and models that have been advanced over time to explain this process

Light Has Been Thrown (on Human Origins): a Brief History of Palaeoanthropology, with Notes on the "Punctuated" Origin of Homo Sapiens

“Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history”: this was the single line that Charles Darwin devoted to human evolution in the Origin of Species (1859). At present, there is a number of extinct species, which we understand  to be related to human evolution, demonstrating that the Darwin’s prediction was correct: light has been thrown, indeed. Moreover, the science of human origin (or palaeoanthropology) appears to be able to shed much light not only on the natural history of humankind, but also on mechanisms and patterns of "evolution" as a general phenomenon. This is of special interest when we focus on data and hypotheses concerning the origin of our own species, Homo sapiens

Measuring the shape. Performance evaluation of a photogrammetry improvement applied to the Neanderthal skull Saccopastore 1

Several digital technologies are nowadays developed and applied to the study of the human fossil record. Here, we present a low-cost hardware implementation of the digital acquisition via photogrammetry, applied to a specimen of paleoanthropological interest: the Neanderthal skull Saccopastore 1. Such implementation has the purpose to semi-automatize the procedures of digital acquisition, by the introduction of an automatically rotating platform users can easily build on their own with minimum costs. We provide all the technical specifications, mostly based on the Arduino UNO™ microcontroller technology, and evaluate the performance and the resolution of the acquisition by comparing it with the CT-scan of the same specimen through the calculation of their shape differences. In our opinion, the replication of the automatic rotating platform, described in this work, may contribute to the improvement of the digital acquisition processes and may represent, in addition, a useful and affordable tool for both research and dissemination

Pleistocene magnetochronology of early hominin sites at Ceprano and Fontana Ranuccio, Italy

Paleomagnetic analyses were conducted on two cores drilled at Ceprano in central Italy where an incomplete hominin cranium was discovered in 1994, as well as on two additional cores from the nearby site of Fontana Ranuccio that yielded hominin remains associated with an Acheulean industry. No evidence for the 0.78 Ma Brunhes–Matuyama boundary was found at Ceprano down to 45 m below the level that yielded the hominin cranium. The Ceprano lithostratigraphy and the paleomagnetic age constraints are broadly consistent with the stratigraphy of the Liri lacustrine sequence of the Latina Valley, constrained by published K–Ar ages between ~ 0.6 and ~ 0.35 Ma, and according to an age model with magnetic susceptibility supported by pollen facies data, suggest that the level that yielded the hominin cranium has an age of ~ 0.45 (+ 0.05, − 0.10) Ma. Evidence for the Brunhes–Matuyama boundary was found at Fontana Ranuccio about 40 m below the hominin level, consistent with a K–Ar age of ~ 0.46 Ma reported for this level. Hence the Ceprano and Fontana Ranuccio hominin occurrences may be of very similar mid-Brunhes age

Pleistocene magnetochronology of early hominin sites at Ceprano and Fontana Ranuccio, Italy

Paleomagnetic analyses were conducted on two cores drilled at Ceprano in central Italy where an incomplete hominin cranium was discovered in 1994, as well as on two additional cores from the nearby site of Fontana Ranuccio that yielded hominin remains associated with an Acheulean industry. No evidence for the 0.78 Ma Brunhes–Matuyama boundary was found at Ceprano down to 45 m below the level that yielded the hominin cranium. The Ceprano lithostratigraphy and the paleomagnetic age constraints are broadly consistent with the stratigraphy of the Liri lacustrine sequence of the Latina Valley, constrained by published K–Ar ages between ~ 0.6 and ~ 0.35 Ma, and according to an age model with magnetic susceptibility supported by pollen facies data, suggest that the level that yielded the hominin cranium has an age of ~ 0.45 (+ 0.05, − 0.10) Ma. Evidence for the Brunhes–Matuyama boundary was found at Fontana Ranuccio about 40 m below the hominin level, consistent with a K–Ar age of ~ 0.46 Ma reported for this level. Hence the Ceprano and Fontana Ranuccio hominin occurrences may be of very similar mid-Brunhes age