Paleoneurology of two early Sicilian: preliminary analysis on two individuals from the paleontological site of San Teodoro (Messina)

The palaeontological site of San Teodoro (Acquedolci, Messina, Italy) is one of the most important focal points for the study of palaeoanthropology and palaeoecology of the Final Pleistocene in the Mediterranean basin. The grotto in the final Epigravettian was used as a burial site and the remains of 7 inhumations come from there. New research activities on human remains have focused on the digital acquisition of the human remains through the use of CT scans and processing through specific software. In the following contribution, the preliminary data obtained by analyzing the endocasts of the ST1 and ST2 individuals are presented. Were applied a combination of qualitative methodologies, for a general description of brain morphology and the description of the occipital venous system, and quantitative methodologies (i.e., geometric morphometry) to investigate the cerebral asymmetries of the occipital lobes more precisely. The comparison collection consists of Anatomical Modern Humans and three other fossil species belonging to the genus Homo (H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis) This preliminary work has shown that the brain morphology of the two individuals from the San Teodoro site is within the intraspecific variability of AMHs, except for the occipito-petalia asymmetry, which is opposed to the variability of modern populations.