Alessandro Riga

University of Florence | UNIFI · Dipartimento di Biologia

Human remains can tell us the story of single individuals as well as entire populations, and they can be informative on cultural practices. Thus, they are part of our cultural heritage. The management of human remains as cultural heritage must consider the needs of preservation, research, and dissemination. The use of 3D technologies provides advan...

Abstract:Human skeletal remains are an immense source of data to describe human biodiversity with an intrinsic complexity due to the multifactorial origin of human variability. Evolution and ontogeny produced complex patterns of variation through contingent events and adaptations. Multivariate approaches have been widely adopted in physical anthrop...

Objectives Twenty‐four dental specimens from the Drimolen Main Quarry (DMQ) are described. This increases the number of DMQ Paranthropus robustus specimens from 48 to 63 and DMQ Homo specimens from 8 to 12. This allows reassessment of the proposed differences between the DMQ P. robustus assemblage and that of Swartkrans. Analysis conducted assesses...

Artificial cranial modification (ACM) and trepanation are medical treatments with a long history in many human societies. Here, we present data on ACM and trepanation in pre-Hispanic Peruvian populations from the collections housed at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology, University of Florence, Italy. The Museum has a rich and important collec...

The origin, development, and legacy of the enigmatic Etruscan civilization from the central region of the Italian peninsula known as Etruria have been debated for centuries. Here we report a genomic time transect of 82 individuals spanning almost two millennia (800 BCE to 1000 CE) across Etruria and southern Italy. During the Iron Age, we detect a...

The Arene Candide Cave is a renowned site on the northwestern Italian coast that has yielded numerous burials dating back to the terminal phases of the Pleistocene (Epigravettian culture). Thanks to the exceptional preservation of the remains, and to the information collected during the excavations that begun in the 1940s, researchers were able to...

In bioarchaeological studies dental root exposure is often used as a marker of periodontal disease; these studies are based on classical methods assuming alveolar resorption as the only (or the main) cause of root exposure. However, several papers suggested that root exposure depends not only on alveolar resorption, but also on other mechanisms. Co...

Objectives Palate morphology is constantly changing throughout an individual's lifespan, yet its asymmetry during growth is still little understood. In this research, we focus on the study of palate morphology by using 3D geometric morphometric approaches to observe changes at different stages of life, and to quantify the impact of directional and...

The Neanderthal specimen from Lamalunga Cave, near Altamura (Apulia, Italy), was discovered during a speleological survey in 1993. The specimen is one of the most complete fossil hominins in Europe and its state of preservation is exceptional, although it is stuck in calcareous concretions and the bones are mostly covered by calcite depositions. Ne...

Objectives: We analyzed the main anatomical traits found in the human frontal bone by using a geometric morphometric approach. The objectives of this study are to explore how the frontal bone morphology varies between the sexes and to detect which part of the frontal bone are sexually dimorphic. Materials and methods: The sample is composed of 1...

It has been hypothesized that the Neolithic transition towards an agricultural and pastoralist economy facilitated the emergence of human-adapted pathogens. Here, we recovered eight Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica genomes from human skeletons of transitional foragers, pastoralists and agropastoralists in western Eurasia that were up to 6,500 yr...

Objectives: Dental caries is often perceived as a modern human disease. However, their presence is documented in many early human groups, various nonhuman primates and, increasingly, our hominin ancestors and relatives. In this study, we describe an antemortem lesion on the root of a Paranthropus robustus third molar from Drimolen, South Africa, w...

Objectives: Dental caries is often perceived as a modern human disease. However, their presence is documented in many early human groups, various non-human primates and, increasingly, our hominin ancestors and relatives. In this study we describe an antemortem lesion on the root of a Paranthropus robustus third molar from Drimolen, South Africa, wh...

Objectives A prevailing hypothesis in paleoanthropology is that early Pleistocene hominin bones were accumulated in South African caves by carnivores, which used those shelters, and the trees surrounding them, as refuge and feeding sites. We tested this hypothesis at the site of Drimolen, by comparing its hominin age‐at‐death distribution to that o...

Pleistocene and early Holocene human fossils in Tuscany are very few and poorly described. Any new information is thus an important contribution to our knowledge of the peopling of this region. Here we present a revision of the human fossil remains from the Riparo Fredian, a site located in Garfagnana and first published by Boschian et al., (1995)....

Pleistocene and early Holocene human fossils in Tuscany are very few and poorly described, with remains from only three sites: Buca del Tasso, Vado all’Arancio and Riparo Fredian [1]. Any new information is thus an important contribution to our knowledge of the peopling of this region. Here we present a revision of the human fossil remains from Rip...

In the African Pleistocene, the fossil evidence for early Homo sapiens populations is still relatively limited. Here we present two additional specimens (two deciduous teeth) recovered from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits of Sibudu Cave (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa). We describe their morphology and metrics, using three-dimensional models of th...

Dental fractures can be produced during life or post-mortem. Ante-mortem chipping may be indicative of different uses of the dentition in masticatory and non-masticatory activities related to variable diets and behaviors. The Krapina collection (Croatia, 130,000 years BP), thanks to the large number of teeth (293 teeth and tooth fragments) within i...

Studying ancient DNA allows us to retrace the evolutionary history of human pathogens, such as Mycobacterium leprae, the main causative agent of leprosy. Leprosy is one of the oldest recorded and most stigmatizing diseases in human history. The disease was prevalent in Europe until the 16th century and is still endemic in many countries with over 2...

Studying ancient DNA allows us to retrace the evolutionary history of human pathogens, such as Mycobacterium leprae, the main causative agent of leprosy. Leprosy is one of the oldest recorded and most stigmatizing diseases in human history. The disease was prevalent in Europe until the 16th century and is still endemic in many countries with over 2...

Details of the results of the genome-wide analysis. (XLSX)

Branch-specific protein-changing SNPs. (XLSX)

Details of the samples and screening results. (XLSX)

Details of the SNPs per individual sample. (XLSX)

Objectives: Early evidence for the treatment of dental pathology is found primarily among food-producing societies associated with high levels of oral pathology. However, some Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers show extensive oral pathology, suggesting that experimentation with therapeutic dental interventions may have greater antiquity. Here we rep...

Objectives: Early evidence for the treatment of dental pathology is found primarily among food-producing societies associated with high levels of oral pathology. However, some Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers show extensive oral pathology, suggesting that experimentation with therapeutic dental interventions may have greater antiquity. Here, we r...

Sono trascorsi 10 anni dalla prima edizione di CODICE ARMONICO e come per tutte le tappe significative di ogni percorso, anche per il nostro convegno conviene ricordare, almeno, lo spirito con cui esso è stato ideato, il significato del nome e gli obiettivi che ci siamo da sempre posti. Per fare ciò mi aiuterò raccontando un aneddoto. Alcuni giorni...

Leprosy was rare in Europe during the Roman period, yet its prevalence increased dramatically in medi- 48 eval times. We examined human remains, with paleopathological lesions indicative of leprosy, dated to 49 the 6th–11th century AD, from Central and Eastern Europe and Byzantine Anatolia. Analysis of ancient 50 DNA and bacterial cell wall lipid b...

Leprosy was rare in Europe during the Roman period, yet its prevalence increased dramatically in medieval times. We examined human remains, with paleopathological lesions indicative of leprosy, dated to the 6(th) -11(th) century AD, from Central and Eastern Europe and Byzantine Anatolia. Analysis of ancient DNA and bacterial cell wall lipid biomark...

In questo articolo presentiamo uno degli aspetti più importanti dell’attuale dibattito sull’origine delle specie. In particolare, ci concentreremo su due modelli alternativi di speciazione: il Gradualismo Filetico e gli Equilibri Intermittenti. Il dibattito tra i sostenitori dei due schieramenti è sempre stato molto acceso poiché si scontrano due v...

Teeth are an important model for developmental studies but, despite an extensive literature on the genetics of dental development, little is known about the environmental influences on dental morphology. Here we test whether and to what extent the environment plays a role in producing morphological variation in human teeth. We selected a sample of...

The effectiveness of the so-called skeletal markers of activity as functional indicators is widely debated. Among them, certain morphological features of the anterior aspect of the femoral head-neck junction (Poirier's facet, cervical fossa of Allen, etc.) have been considered in relation to some behaviors and specific activities (e.g., squatting,...

Development is a complex phenomenon where the forming phenotype interacts with genetic and environmental inputs. Teeth are an important model for developmental studies and their development has been thoroughly investigated. However, despite of a large literature on the genetics of dental development, no studies have focused yet on the environmental...