Neanderthal 'Altamura Man' from Southern Italy

Altamura Man is one of the most complete and best preserved Neanderthal skeletons ever discovered. His fossilized bones, however, have remained hidden from view at the bottom of a sinkhole near Altamura, a town in southern Italy.

That's where he fell and starved to death more than 130,000 years ago.



Cavers came face to face with his skull, covered in limestone deposits, for the first time in 1993. Frustratingly for scientists, though, its inaccessible location -- a 20-minute journey from the surface through narrow crevices -- has made study of the skeleton extremely difficult. The body remains lodged in a small chamber deep in the karst cave system.

"They used the rope to bring me down and many of my colleagues. For me, it was a totally amazing experience. When you get in that corner and you see the skeleton there, you're really blown away," said Jacopo Moggi-Cecchi, a professor in the department of biology at the University of Florence.

"This individual must have fallen down a shaft. Maybe he didn't see the hole in the ground. We think he sat there and died," said Moggi-Cecchi. "The original shaft he fell through is no longer there. It's been filled by sediment so we are confident the entire skeleton is there. No animals could have got there."



This new research, published in the journal PLOS on Wednesday by Moggi-Cecchi and his colleagues, is beginning to yield more information about the man.

Based on photos, videoscope footage and X-rays taken in the depth of cave, scientists have published an initial study of the man's jaw, including an almost complete set of teeth. They suggest that the man was of adult age, but not old, and he had also lost two teeth before he died.

"The tooth loss is something interesting. We have a large fossil record of Neanderthals, and it's not typical. In terms of oral health, they were in good shape," said Moggi-Cecchi.

The roots of some teeth were exposed, which could suggest gum disease was at play, he said. Some teeth in the lower jaw also had deposits of dental calculus -- calcified plaque that's familiar to dentists today.

Homo neanderthalensis walked the Earth for a period of about 350,000 years before they disappeared, living in what's now Europe and parts of Asia. They disappeared about 40,000 years ago -- although it's believed that they overlapped with Homo sapiens geographically for a period of more than 30,000 years after some humans migrated out of Africa.

Earlier research, published in 2016 based on DNA analysis of the man's shoulder bone, confirmed that the body was indeed Neanderthal and that he had lived between 130,000 to 172,000 years ago.Our archaic relatives used their front teeth almost as a "third hand" to hold meat while cutting it or to hold skins or leather for preparation, Moggi-Cecchi explained. Altamura Man had "marked wear" that might be related to this kind of activity.



For a more detailed analysis, however, Moggi-Cecchi said that it would be necessary to get the skull inside a lab as the teeth, like the rest of the skeleton, are covered in calcite -- mineral deposits from the limestone karst.

Scientists hope one day that the skeleton, or at least part of it, will be removed from the cave to allow in-depth study.

Ultimately, Moggi-Cecchi said the man could become a Neanderthal version of Otzi the Iceman -- whose 5,300-year-old frozen body was found by a couple hiking in the North Italian Alps in 1991. Otzi has become a window into early human history for scientists and tourists alike. Nearly every part of him has been analyzed, including what he may have sounded like, the contents in his stomach and how he died.

"The fact that we can get this kind of information simply by looking at the specimen in situ, imagine what the possibilities are if we can extract the specimen from the cave. "

Materials and methods
To understand what kind of observations would be possible, it was important to figure out the relative position of the cranium and mandible in the cave (Fig 2). The cranium lies on its vault, slightly tilted to the left, with the orbits facing anteriorly toward the ‘Apse’. Two large apices of karstic concretions descend from above, framing the midface on the right and the left side of the cranium, thus preventing direct observation of the entire maxillary arcade and teeth. Only the labial aspect of the incisors can be easily examined. The mandible is located in the bone assemblage in front of the cranium and slightly to its right (Fig 2). It lies upside down with the teeth facing the floor of the cave. The occlusal surfaces of the molar teeth are in partial contact with the right fibula below them. The right femur rests above the anterior part of the body of the mandible, close to the symphysis.



Fig 2. Cranium and mandible.

a) the cranium lies on its vault, embedded between two large calcareous formations (green arrows), while the mandible is in front of the cranium, slightly to its right (red arrow). b) The mandible lies upside down above other bones and the right femur (blue arrow) rests on it, covering the anterior part of the body and the mandibular symphysis.

Overall preservation of the dentition and oral structures is good; however, all surfaces (teeth and bones) are covered with a calcite layer of variable thickness. Moreover, large “coralloid” formations (as defined in [3]) cover the tooth crowns in some areas, notably the maxillary anterior teeth, partially hiding the original morphology of the labial, incisal and lingual surfaces (Fig 2A). Because of the position of the cranium and mandible and the widespread calcite layers covering all bones and teeth, morphological observations were limited to the gross morphology of the oral structures, and any analysis had to be carried out with the help of various technical devices.

Photos of the dentition, maxilla and mandible were taken with an Olympus IPLEX NX IV9635N videoscope with a 3.5 m-long probe of 6 mm diameter and 120D/NF lens with a 120° angle; the base unit was an 8.4-inch daylight view LCD touchscreen monitor. The small dimensions and the high flexibility of the Olympus probe meant that it could be inserted through the narrow passages of the karstic flow above the cranium to provide images of the lingual side and occlusal plan of the maxillary arch and to reach the mandible below the bone assemblage. Prior to the use of the Olympus videoscope, test acquisitions were made with an Ambu aScope 3 videoscope with aView LCD monitor.

The position of the skull and mandible prevented us from using X-ray devices on all the dentition and we could only take X-ray images of the upper anterior teeth with a handheld KaVo NOMAD™ Pro 2 X-ray system (exposure time 1 sec, 60 kV, 2.5 mA, distance from subject 35 cm). Phosphorus sensors were developed using a KaVo ScanXam™ scanner.

Results
The dentition of the Altamura Neanderthal is 80% complete; all the teeth are present in situ except for the right P3 and left M1 in the maxilla and the right I1 and P3 and left I1 and I2 in the mandible. Observations were made on the following features: ante-mortem tooth loss, periodontal status, dental wear, palatine torus, taurodontism, retromolar space and periapical lesion of the upper I2.

Ante-mortem tooth loss
The position of the cranium allows us to assume that the two missing maxillary teeth (RP3 and LM1) were lost in vitam. In the place for the RP3 (Fig 3A), the remnants of the alveolus are not resorbed and a deep gap is evident in the alveolar bone; the space left in the tooth row by the tooth loss is reduced due to migration of the adjacent P4.


Fig 3. Ante-Mortem Tooth Loss (AMTL).

a) Maxillary right hemiarch with (from above): M1, P4, C’, I2; between P4 and C’ there is a space with the remnants of the socket of RP3; the space left in the tooth row by the tooth loss is reduced by the relative drift of adjacent teeth. b) Socket of LM1 with a well-defined space for three roots; there are no evident marks of bone resorption. We cannot exclude the possibility of a post-mortem tooth loss, but the position of the skull makes this hypothesis unlikely.

The socket of LM1 is evident, although a calcareous film over the bone makes its observation difficult. The socket shows a well-defined trifurcation of the space for the roots (Fig 3B).

In the mandibular dentition, the calcite deposits prevent observation of the alveolar bone and make it difficult to reconstruct whether tooth loss of the anterior teeth occurred in vitam (as a consequence of alveolar resorption) or post mortem.



AMTL has been observed in a few Neanderthal specimens (Table 1). In one case (Gibraltar 2), the specimen is a child about 5 years old [9]; all the other specimens are advanced in age. Literature reports are not in agreement on the exact number of AMTL [10, 11]; however, in 2 of the 5 specimens (Guattari 1 and La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1), AMTL occurred in at least 25% of the observable alveoli.