Nuovi ritrovamenti di resti di vertebrati nel travertino di Alcamo (TP).

I depositi di travertino di Alcamo (TP) sono noti sin dal 1928 soprattutto per aver restituito resti dell’elefante di piccola taglia Paleoloxodon falconeri. Intorno agli anni ’80 nella cava di Contrada Cappuccini i lavori di coltivazione portarono alla luce una grossa frattura nel travertino. La frattura, riempita di un paleosuolo e chiaramente successiva alla formazione del travertino, conteneva un’associazione fossile caratterizzata dalla presenza di Paleoloxodon mnaidriensis. Il fatto che il paleosuolo contenga tali resti, assenti nel bancone di travertino caratterizzato invece dalla presenza dell’elefante di piccola taglia, costituisce un'inoppugnabile prova stratigrafica sulla successi…

Defining the Island Dwarfing Rate of an Extinct Sicilian Elephant Using Ancient DNA

Evolution on islands, and the often extreme phenotypic changes associated with it, has attracted much interest from evolutionary biologists. However, measuring the rate of change of a particular phenotypic trait of extinct animals can be challenging, due to the incompleteness of the fossil record. Here, we use combined molecular and fossil evidence to define the minimum and maximum rate of dwarfing in an extinct Mediterranean dwarf elephant from Puntali Cave (Sicily). Despite the challenges associated with recovering ancient DNA from warm climates, we successfully retrieved a mitogenome from a sample with an estimated age between 147,000 and 50,000 years. Our results suggest that this speci…

la domesticazione dei bovidi italiani: ipotesi suggerite dallo studio paleogenetico di antichi reperti di Bos primigenius

Sicilian Cenozoic sharks from the collections of G. G. Gemmellaro Museum

Nuove indagini morfometriche sui resti umani della grotta di S. Teodoro.

Prima segnalazione di Carcharodon carcharias (Linnaeus, 1758) (Chondrichthyes Lamnidae) nei sedimenti pleistocenici di Balestrate (Palermo, Sicilia)

Bridging Malta and Sicily through geoheritage exploitation: Identification and assessment of geosites for territorial enhancement

Malta and Sicily show common geological and geomorphological features, having been also physically linked not later than the Last Glacial Maximum. At present both islands have a high tourist vocation, but their environmental potential is not fully exploited for attracting tourists and visitors. In the framework of an international research project, “Ecological Cross-border Networks Malta-Sicily” (RE.MA.SI.), a multidisciplinary study for the identification, selection and enhancement of geosites in the Maltese and Sicilian islands was carried out. A number of sites both in Malta and Sicily have been identified and qualitatively and quantitatively assessed applying a methodology already teste…

Ambiente e clima della Sicilia durante gli ultimi 20 mila anni

Environment and Climate in Sicily over the last 20, 000 years. (IT ISSN 0394-3356, 2010). A series of recent studies shed light on the central Mediterranean, and Sicily, climate and environment, starting from the last glacial maximum (about 20 ka cal BP). In the present paper, we examine most of these works, in order to unravel environmental changes of the past, mainly in terms of temperature, atmospheric pattern, precipitation, vegetation and faunal associations. The climate of the last glacial maximum was characterised by very low temperature and by repeated northerlies penetration, even during summer. Low precipitation values led to a steppe- or semisteppe-like vegetation pattern, domina…

La fauna: indagine archeozoologica

Stop 3.1: Monte Pellegrino

Stop 3.2: Alcamo Cappuccini

Geoscience Teaching and Student Interest in Secondary Schools-Preliminary Results from an Interest Research in Greece, Spain and Italy.

The results of a topic-interest study on geosciences among 14- to 17-year-old school students are reported. The research was organized in the framework of the European project Geoschools to investigate the interest of students in the context of teaching strategies for geosciences in secondary schools. A questionnaire was designed as the main data-collection tool, based on the results of a comparison on geosciences curricula among the five European countries (Austria, Greece, Portugal, Italy, and Spain) which are the partners in the GEOschools project. The present study focuses on results from Greece and Spain but also includes preliminary results from Italy, for comparison purposes. Questio…

Il servizio civile: un'esperienza lavorativa e un'opportunità per acquisire competenze reali

Il ruolo diversificato che i Musei scientifici hanno assunto, ha comportato un ampliamento delle attività che si svolgono sia al suo interno che nel territorio. Se da un lato le attività museali richiedono sempre più professionalità, specializzazione, interdisciplinarietà, trasversalità e lavoro di gruppo, dall’altro lato il numero di operatori presenti nei Musei, almeno quelli universitari, è sempre più ridotto. In questo complesso quadro, negli ultimi anni il Museo Geologico Gemmellaro è diventato sede di servizio civile nazionale. Questa opportunità oltre a costituire un insostituibile aiuto alle attività del museo rappresenta per i giovani un’esperienza lavorativa ed un’opportunità per …

I resti scheletrici della grotta di S. Teodoro presso il Museo Gemmellaro di Palermo: il nuovo restauro conservativo di ST2

The work describes the restoration of the cranium ST2 of the Epipalaeolithic site of S. Teodoro, Sicily. This restoration has been conducted in accordance to modern criteria of conservation limiting the integrative and reconstructive interpretation to the minimum. After the restauration ST2 has been morphologically described and measured. The fortuitous recovery of a left incus bone allowed its morphological and metrical description.

Population dynamic of the extinct European aurochs: genetic evidence of a north-south differentiation pattern and no evidence of post-glacial expansion

International audience; Abstract Background The aurochs ( Bos primigenius ) was a large bovine that ranged over almost the entirety of the Eurasian continent and North Africa. It is the wild ancestor of the modern cattle ( Bos taurus ), and went extinct in 1627 probably as a consequence of human hunting and the progressive reduction of its habitat. To investigate in detail the genetic history of this species and to compare the population dynamics in different European areas, we analysed Bos primigenius remains from various sites across Italy. Results Fourteen samples provided ancient DNA fragments from the mitochondrial hypervariable region. Our data, jointly analysed with previously publis…

Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer subsistence in Mediterranean coastal environments: an isotopic study of the diets of earliest directlyt-dated humans from Sicily

Abstract The subsistence of hunter-gatherers in the Mediterranean Basin has been the object of few studies, which have not fully clarified the role of aquatic resources in their diets. Here we present the results of AMS radiocarbon dating and of isotope analyses on the earliest directly-dated human remains from Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. The radiocarbon determinations show that the Upper Palaeolithic (Epigravettian) humans from Grotta di San Teodoro (15 232–14 126 cal. BP) and Grotta Addaura Caprara (16 060–15 007 cal. BP) date to the Late-glacial and were possibly contemporary. The diets of these individuals were dominated by the protein of large terrestrial mamma…

Giants end Elephants of Sicily

The great abundance of fascinating and impressive natural phenomena, like the active volcanoes, the thermal springs or the earthquakes, have fed the imagination of men, who have interpreted them as the manifestation of the existence of supernatural and fantastic beings giving rise to myth and legend. Among so many myths one particularly, that of the Cyclops Polyphemus, is closely linked to the geopalaeontological history of the Sicilian island. The discovery, often inside caves, of the fossil skulls of elephants, in which (in the frontal part) there is a great nasal hollow where during life there was the trunk, gave birth to the belief that one-eyed giants had existed, in past times; in fac…

Estimating the dwarfing rate of an extinct Sicilian elephant.

Summary Evolution on islands, together with the often extreme phenotypic changes associated with it, has attracted much interest from evolutionary biologists. However, measuring the rate of change of phenotypic traits of extinct animals can be challenging, in part due to the incompleteness of the fossil record. Here, we use combined molecular and fossil evidence to define the minimum and maximum rate of dwarfing in an extinct Mediterranean dwarf elephant from Puntali Cave (Sicily). 1 Despite the challenges associated with recovering ancient DNA from warm climates, 2 we successfully retrieved a mitogenome from a sample with an estimated age between 175,500 and 50,000 years. Our results sugge…

Proposta di istituzione del Geosito. Motivazione e localizzazione

Sicilian Palaentological geosites: Knowledege, protection and exploitation of the palaentological heritage

Nel volto di Thea: isole scomparse ed elefanti nani.

Giganti ed elefanti: dal mito alla scienza

Mithocondrial DNA phylogeography in Italian Bos primigenius specimens: new insight into cattle domestication process

Abstract 318 - section Bioarcaeology - ISA 2008 Siena 12th-16th may 2008 A CURA DI Fondazione Monte de'Paschi, Siena # 37th International Symposium on Archaeometry (ISA 2008)