News

A month ago, we have had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Emiliano Bruner, one of the major experts on paleoneurology and cranial functional morphology. He gave a wonderful lecture on paleoneurology in our human anatomy course, and he has also given a wonderful seminar titled “Paleoneurology and morphological integration: a perspective in medicine and evolution”.   A big thanks to Dr. Bruner. You can follow his blog full of very interesting articles on human evolution, and in particular on paleoneurology:

We have a new 3D printer, the Form 2 from formlabs (which we share with Dr. Adams lab), and we are currently experimenting the creation of 3D prints of our dental cast collections. The results so far are amazing! Here a video on how this 3D printer works: Video More information on https://formlabs.com/ Luca

Paleo diet? The opinion of a biological anthropologist Followers of the Paleo diet nutritional plan base their eating habits on our ancestors’ traditions from the Paleolithic period, between 2.5 million and 10,000 years ago, before agriculture and industry. Or do they? We talked about it with Luca Fiorenza, Senior Lecturer and head of the Palaeodiet Research Lab at Monash University. You can listen the radio interview (in Italian) on the following link: http://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/italian/en/content/paleo-diet-word-anthropologist-biologist

Here a photo of the seminar about the paleo diet myth I have given at the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at Monash University.

ddp images Nature just published a very interesting paper on DNA analysis of Neanderthal dental calculus from Spy (Belgium) and El Sidron (Spain), where they confirm our results on Neanderthal diet, where they indicate that the Neanderthals from northern latitudes ate predominantly meat, while Neanderthals that inhabited southern and warmer habitats had a diet that included vegetables and mushrooms https://www.newscientist.com/article/2123669-neanderthals-may-have-medicated-with-penicillin-and-painkillers/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/neanderthal-dental-plaque-shows-what-a-paleo-diet-really-looks-like/518949/ https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/neanderthal-s-used-aspirin-s-ancestor Luca

Our manuscript on “Occlusion in an Adult Male Gorilla with a Supernumerary Maxillary Premolar” has been finally published on the International Journal of Primatology: Fiorenza L., Kullmer O., 2016. Occlusion in an Adult Male Gorilla with a Supernumerary Maxillary Premolar. International Journal of Primatology: DOI 10.1007/s10764-016-9937-6  

  The Workshop on Virtual Reconstruction and Computational Biomechanics organised at Monash University has been extremely successful. We had many national and international speakers from different institutes and industries. I would like to thank: Stefano Benazzi (University of Bologna and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology), Stephen Wroe (University of New England), Justin Ledogar (University of New England), Will Parr (University of New South Wales), Phil Clausen (University of Newcastle), Samuel Evans (University of Newcastle), Michael Curry (University of New

With advances in computer software and imaging technology, Finite Element Analysis has reached a level of sophistication and accessibility that makes it a powerful tool in the testing of biomechanical hypotheses in studies of vertebrate form and function. Dr. Luca Fiorenza and Dr. Justin Adams from the Centre of Human Anatomy Education is organising a workshop in the application of Virtual Reconstruction and Finite Element methods in human biology at Monash University on 20th and 21st October 2016.The workshop will