Laura Martín-Francés

Laura is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at CENIEH (Spain) and Monash University (Australia). Her research focuses in the pattern of settlement of hominin groups during the Early and Middle Pleistocene in Europe, with special interest in the western part. She applies morphometric techniques to the outer and inner dental tissues to investigate the appearance and evolution of the Neanderthal traits. Currently, Laura is at PalaeoDiet Lab (Monash University) conducting her EU-MSCA project BITE. The aim of this project is to evaluate how morphometric dental traits evolved to adapt to diet or cultural habits as well as the pace of these changes in phylogenetically related, and chronologically consecutive European groups. She will investigate complementary dental proxies (dental wear, morphology, and enamel thickness) to assess if the cranio-dental morphology of European groups truly correlate with biomechanical stress.