Altamura Man: The Most Complete Neanderthal Skeleton Ever Found?

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Today we're talking about the fantastic archaeological ancient cave discovery from Italy: The Altamura Man.

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In 1993, a group of speleologists, or scientific cave explorers, entered a narrow tunnel in La Solange Cave in the Lamalunga district just outside the town of Altamura, and at the far end, they came upon an upside-down human skull attached to the rock among many calcium accretions and stalagmites, alongside quite a large collection of the rest of this person’s skeleton partly covered with, or embedded calcareous concretions. These bones proved to be the prehistoric human remains of the most complete Neanderthal ever found.

Sources:
https://archaeologymag.com/2025/11/neanderthal-skull-reveals-details-about-nasal-anatomy/
https://www.johnhawks.net/p/a-look-at-the-neanderthal-from-altamura?hide_intro_popup=true
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/stunningly-well-preserved-neanderthal-skull-suggests-the-species-large-noses-werent-adapted-for-the-cold-180987750/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379124003342
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-04644-1
https://archaeology.org/news/2015/04/03/150403-italy-altamura-man/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15636069/
https://flore.unifi.it/handle/2158/1002533
https://phys.org/news/2015-04-altamura-yields-oldest-neanderthal-dna.html
Buzi, C., Profico, A., Lorenzo, C., & Manzi, G. (2025). The first preserved nasal cavity in the human fossil record: The Neanderthal from Altamura. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 122(48). doi:10.1073/pnas.2426309122
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2426309122
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02438135
Di Vincenzo F, Churchill SE, Buzi C, et al. Distinct among Neanderthals: The scapula of the skeleton from Altamura, Italy. Quaternary Science Reviews. 2019;217:76-88. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.11.023

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