Federica Crivellaro

University of Cambridge | Cam · Division of Biological Anthropology

Africa is the birthplace of the species Homo sapiens, and Africans today are genetically more diverse than other populations of the world. However, the processes that underpinned the evolution of African populations remain largely obscure. Only a handful of late Pleistocene African fossils (∼50-12 Ka) are known, while the more numerous sites with h...

The Neanderthal remains from Shanidar Cave, excavated between 1951 and 1960, have played a central role in debates concerning diverse aspects of Neanderthal morphology and behaviour. In 2015 and 2016, renewed excavations at the site uncovered hominin remains from the immediate area where the partial skeleton of Shanidar 5 was found in 1960. Shanida...

Human skin color represents a classic example of a quantitative trait that is highly polymorphic in humans. Models based on natural selection suggest that pigmentation variation has accumulated in response to human dispersals and colonization of diverse environments, primarily due to differences in the damaging versus vitamin D synthesis-related ef...

Human skin color represents a classic example of a quantitative trait that is highly polymorphic in humans. Models based on natural selection suggest that pigmentation variation has accumulated in response to human dispersals and colonization of diverse environments, primarily due to differences in the damaging versus vitamin D synthesis-related ef...

Replying to C. M. Stojanowski et al. Nature 539, 10.1038/nature19778 (2016) "Contesting the massacre at Nataruk".

The nature of inter-group relations among prehistoric hunter-gatherers remains disputed, with arguments in favour and against the existence of warfare before the development of sedentary societies. Here we report on a case of inter-group violence towards a group of hunter-gatherers from Nataruk, west of Lake Turkana, which during the late Pleistoce...

The animal and plant biodiversity of the Italian territory is known to be one of the richest in the Mediterranean basin and Europe as a whole, but does the genetic diversity of extant human populations show a comparable pattern? According to a number of studies, the genetic structure of Italian populations retains the signatures of complex peopling...

Background: Public acceptance and understanding of evolution is among the most investigated themes within studies of science and society. In the past decades, scientists and educators have explored acceptance and understanding of the Darwinian theories across a variety of publics, in order to identify possible causal explanations and barriers that...

The northern region of the Indian subcontinent is a vast landscape interlaced by diverse ecologies, for example, the Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas. A great number of ethnic groups are found there, displaying a multitude of languages and cultures. The Tharu is one of the largest and most linguistically diverse of such groups, scattered across the...

This study investigates the efficacy of an extra-curricular didactic course aimed at improving students’ knowledge on topics related to brain, communication, language and human evolution. A total number of 85 students from a Roman middle school followed an interdisciplinary course on the evolution of the human language. Before and after the course,...

This paper reports on the fifth season of fieldwork for the Palaeoanthropology part of the Desert Migrations Project. Previous seasons established an extensive archaeological map based on a wide survey of the rich record along the edges of the Ubari Sand Sea, a small area of the Messak Settafet, the Wadi al-Ajal, the Wadi ash-Shati and the Wadi Bar...

Great European mountain ranges have acted as barriers to gene flow for resident populations since prehistory and have offered a place for the settlement of small, and sometimes culturally diverse, communities. Therefore, the human groups that have settled in these areas are worth exploring as an important potential source of diversity in the geneti...

Skin pigmentation is one of the most variable phenotypic traits in humans. A non-synonymous substitution (rs1426654) in the third exon of SLC24A5 accounts for lighter skin in Europeans but not in East Asians. A previous genome-wide association study carried out in a heterogeneous sample of UK immigrants of South Asian descent suggested that this ge...

South Asian populations harbor a high degree of genetic diversity, due in part to demographic history. Two studies on genome-wide variation in Indian populations have shown that most Indian populations show varying degrees of admixture between ancestral north Indian and ancestral south Indian components. As a result of this structure, genetic varia...

The identification of isolation signatures is fundamental to better understand the genetic structure of human populations and to test the relations between cultural factors and genetic variation. However, with current approaches, it is not possible to distinguish between the consequences of long-term isolation and the effects of reduced sample size...

mtDNA HVR-1 (16033–16365 np) and HVR-2 (73–340 np) genetic diversity and demographic parameter estimates in 20 European populations. (DOC)

Estimates of effective population size, gene flow and splitting time for all runs performed. (DOC)

Measures of MCMC mixing behavior. (DOC)

List of populations used for the analysis of Y chromosome STRs. (DOC)

Posterior distributions of parameter estimates. Parameter abbreviations: q1, q2 and qa (effective population size of populations 1,2 and ancestral), T (splitting time), m1>2 (gene flow rate per haplotype from populations 2 to 1) and m2>1 (gene flow rate per haplotype from populations 1 to 2). A) Sappada vs Cadore; B) Sappada vs Central-Western Euro...

Fst value distributions of simulated scenarios. The gene flow distributions of the local ethnicity scenario with original (red line) and modified values (green lines) are shown in frames A and B whereas the effective size settings in frames C and D. Frames E and F show the percentual decrease of Fst modal values obtained with increasing values of g...

Evolutionary topology used for the simulations of the three scenarios. (PDF)

Mitochondrial DNA and Y Chromosome raw data of the populations under study. (XLS)

mtDNA HVR-1 (16033–16365 np) genetic diversity and demographic parameter estimates in 46 European populations. (DOC)

Haplogroup frequency distribution in populations under study. (DOC)

Nucleotide pairwise mismatch distribution for the populations under study. (PDF)

The present study contributes to the question of school literacy about the brain, with an original survey conducted on Italian students from the 3(rd) to 10(th) grades (n = 508). The main goal was to test student's knowledge, attitudes, and interests about neuroscience, to assess needs, prospects, and difficulties in teaching about the brain from e...

Summary of the sample composition per school grade. This study uses US school grade standards (first column) which correspond to the Italian grades illustrated in the second column. (PDF)

The questionnaire “Open Your Mind!”. (PDF)

The study of geographically and/or linguistically isolated populations could represent a potential area of interaction between population and forensic genetics. These investigations may be useful to evaluate the suitability of loci which have been selected using forensic criteria for bio-anthropological studies. At the same time, they give us an op...

Anthropologists have long been fascinated by the isolated hunter-gatherer populations in Southeast Asia (SEA) collectively known as "Negritos." However, the origins and affinities of these groups remain unresolved. Negritos are characterized by their short stature, dark skin color, and wiry hair, and they inhabit the Philippines, Malay Peninsula, a...

Milk consumption and lactose digestion after weaning are exclusively human traits made possible by the continued production of the enzyme lactase in adulthood. Multiple independent mutations in a 100-bp region--part of an enhancer--approximately 14-kb upstream of the LCT gene are associated with this trait in Europeans and pastoralists from Saudi A...

The sampling location of Mahadeo Koli and Thakar populations. (TIF)

The complete mtDNA data from Mahadeo-Koli and Thakur populations. (XLS)

Unrooted phylogenetic network of haplogroup R1a Y-STR haplotypes among different Indian populations showing the haplotype sharing of Thakur and Mahadeo-Koli. The network was constructed using a median-joining algorithm as implemented in the Network 4.5.0.2 program. The size of the circles is proportional to the number of samples. (TIF)

The Y-SNP and Y-STR complete data from Mahadeo-Koli and Thakur populations. (XLS)

The geographical position of Maharashtra state makes it rather essential to study the dispersal of modern humans in South Asia. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the cultural, linguistic and geographical affinity of the populations living in Maharashtra state with other South Asian populations. The genetic origin of populations livin...

This paper reports on the results of the work of the Palaeo team of the DMP in January 2010. The fieldwork was focused on two different areas – the Wadi ash-Shati and the southwestern margin of the Ubari Sand Sea. Work in the Wadi ash-Shati confirmed the existence of Oldowan sites in Fazzan (locality SHT11 and environs), which although undated, rep...

This paper reports on the work carried out during the 2009 field season of the prehistory sub-theme of the Desert Migrations Project. The work consisted of detailed survey and small-scale excavations in two wadis that drain the Messak Settafet, near the town of Jarma. Both wadis were found to contain evidence of Palaeolithic and Neolithic occupatio...

The palaeoanthropological and geomorphological sub-projects of the Desert Migrations Project (DMP) focus on the Pleistocene and early Holocene environment and prehistory of Fazzan so as to assess the timing and extent of hominin and human movement across the Sahara through time. This paper reports on the findings of the 2008 field season, with a fo...

We briefly review the current status of anthropological and genetic studies of isolated populations and of their micro-evolutionary and biomedical applications, with particular emphasis on European populations. Thereafter, we describe the ongoing collaborative research project "Isolating the Isolates: geographic and cultural factors of human geneti...

Detailed population data were obtained on the distribution of novel biallelic markers that finely dissect the human Y-chromosome haplogroup E-M78. Among 6,501 Y chromosomes sampled in 81 human populations worldwide, we found 517 E-M78 chromosomes and assigned them to 10 subhaplogroups. Eleven microsatellite loci were used to further evaluate subhap...

The Desert Migrations Project is a new interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional collaborative project between the Society for Libyan Studies and the Department of Antiquities. The geographical focus of the study is the Fazzan region of southwest Libya and in thematic terms we aim to address the theme of migration in the broadest sense, encompassing...

This paper synthesises the findings of three seasons of fieldwork in Western Sahara, focusing on the funerary and related archaeology of the Polisario-controlled «Free Zone». Building on the results of a reconnaissance survey in the Northern Sector of the Free Zone in 2002, new findings from a reconnaissance survey in the Southern Sector are presen...