(Positioning the sample correctly in front of the beam (Left) is crucial to get the right area in the field of view (Right))

At the end of the current Beamtime season, we had an exciting beamtime allocation to study ancient human teeth with Synchrotron Radiation Micro CT. The goal of this experiment was to enhance our understanding of growth and developmental variation in Anatomically Modern Humans and to investigate indicators of perimortem stress.

The initial results of the imaging are promising, offering valuable data that could contribute to our knowledge of how these ancient populations developed and responded to environmental and physiological stressors.

This experiment was truly a team effort, and I’m immensely grateful to everyone involved. A special thank you to my colleagues Marko and Elena for their unwavering support, and to my supervisor Diego, whose technical expertise was invaluable throughout the process.

Big thanks also to the MOTHERS ERC team from Rome, including Professor Nava and Martina Trocchi, who made the trip from Rome to assist us, and to Dr Davorka Radovčić, who traveled from Croatia to lend a hand wit her imaging experience. As they say, teamwork makes the dream work, and this experiment was a perfect example of that. I’m looking forward to diving deeper into the data and seeing where our discoveries lead!

(From Left to right: Simone Lemmers (ENIGMA PI), Alessia Nava, Davorka Radovčić, Diego Dreossi, Marko Prasek and Martina Trocchi)

(During this beamtime we had some technical challenges, but thanks to my skilled colleagues, we managed to collect all the data we were planning to! Tired but happy!)