A visit to the CENIEH

Luca Fiorenza
October 3, 2017

Last week I had the pleasure to visit the CENIEH, Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana, that is one of the major European research centers on Human Evolution. Is located in Burgos, in the northern Spain, very close to the archaeological site of Atapuerca, a UNESCO World Heritage site, containing human fossil remains from nearly one million till more recent times.

I was kindly invited by Dr. Emiliano Bruner to give a talk on “Imaging and Analysis in Dental Anthropology“, and I also had the opportunity to meet other experts in the field of Dental Anthropology, such as José-María Bermúdez de Castro, Marina Lozano and Alejandro Romero.

Next to the CENIEH there is also the fantastic Museum of Human Evolution , a beautiful building where are exposed the orginal human fossils from Atapuerca.

Luca Fiorenza

Luca is Head of the Palaeodiet Research Lab and he received his Bachelor/Master degree in Natural Sciences in 2003 at La Sapienza University in Rome (Italy), and completed his PhD in Biological Sciences between the Goethe University and the Senckenberg Research Institute (Frankfurt, Germany) at the end of 2009. During his doctoral degree he was part of an outstanding multidisciplinary network called EVAN (European Virtual Anthropology Network), where he mastered cutting-edge techniques for the study of anatomical variability, including medical imaging, 3D digitisation, display, modelling and programming. Luca’s research interests mostly focus on functional morphology of the masticatory apparatus in human and non-human primates, and on the importance of the role of diet in human evolution.