Search

In July 2011, renovations to Yale-New Haven Hospital inadvertently exposed the cemetery of Christ Church, New Haven, Connecticut's first Catholic cemetery. While this cemetery was active between 1833 and 1851, both the church and its cemetery disappeared from public records, making the discovery serendipitous. Four relatively well-preserved adult skeletons were recovered with few artifacts. All four individuals show indicators of manual labor, health and disease stressors, and dental health issues. Two show indicators of trauma, with the possibility of judicial hanging in one individual. Musculoskeletal markings are consistent with physical stress, and two individuals have arthritic indicators of repetitive movement/specialized activities. Radiographic analyses show osteopenia, healed trauma, and other pathologies in several individuals. Dental calculus analysis did not identify any tuberculosis indicators, despite osteological markers. Isotopic analyses of teeth indicate that all four were likely recent immigrants to the Northeastern United States. Nuclear and mitochondrial DNA were recovered from three individuals, and these analyses identified ancestry, hair/eye color, and relatedness. Genetic and isotopic results upended our initial ancestry assessment based on burial context alone. These individuals provide biocultural evidence of New Haven's Industrial Revolution and the plasticity of ethnic and religious identity in the immigrant experience. Their recovery and the multifaceted analyses described here illuminate a previously undescribed part of the city's rich history. The collective expertise of biological, geochemical, archaeological, and historical researchers interprets socioeconomic and cultural identity better than any one could alone. Our combined efforts changed our initial assumptions of a poor urban Catholic cemetery's membership, and provide a template for future discoveries and analyses.

The literature describing the complex anatomy of the middle cerebral artery (MCA), lenticulostriate arteries, and recurrent artery of Heubner, does not discuss the comparative anatomy of the cerebrum, MCA, the recurrent artery of Heubner, and the relationship of the MCA with the rhinal sulci. The entorhinal literature does not detail the comparative anatomic modification of the rhinal and endorhinal sulci, piriform lobe and the hippocampus's compressed positional change in the temporal lobe. This investigation's objectives were to analyze the comparative anatomic modifications of the cerebrum, the MCA, lenticulostriate arteries, recurrent artery of Heubner, olfactory tubercule, anterior perforate substance, rhinal sulcus, endorhinal sulcus, piriform lobe, entorhinal cortex, and hippocampus. Brain dissections of adult iguana, rabbit, sheep, cat, dog, macaque, human and human fetal specimens were analyzed. The MCA branches enter the striate nuclei via the endorhinal sulcus, with few branches present in the rhinal sulcus. Modifications of the cerebrum, with the development of gyri and sulci and opercula covering the insula, changes the linear surface configuration of the MCA into a tridimensional one. Similar changes are present in human fetal specimens. The cerebral neocortical expansion changes the position of the rhinal and endorhinal sulci, their relationship with the MCA, the size of the olfactory tubercule, the position and size of the piriform lobe, and the diagonal course of the lenticulostriates and recurrent artery of Heubner. The hippocampus becomes compressed in the inferomedial region of the human temporal lobe. The lenticulostriate arteries are likely the first developed component of the MCA., (© 2022 The Authors. The Anatomical Record published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Association for Anatomy.)

This study's objective was to investigate obtaining high-resolution micro-computed tomography (CT) imaging of the injected arterial circulation of the brains of the dogfish (Squalus acanthias), American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana), and green iguana (Iguana iguana). No micro-CT images of the arterial morphology of the brains of these vertebrates were previously published. Micro-CT imaging was performed on brains that had the cerebral arterial and ventricular systems injected with a radiopaque barium-gelatin compound in the early 1970s. These specimens were dissected and placed in a preservative fluid for 35 years, until imaged with micro-CT. The obtained micro-CT images were processed with a software program that provided 3D rotational motion rendering, and sequential display of 2D renderings of the micro-CT data. The anatomic information provided by the high-resolution micro-CT is not reproducible by any other radiopaque contrast currently available, without tissue removal corrosion, and enhanced the dissection information. The digital videos of the micro-CT 3D rotational motion rendering and sequential display of 2D renderings of the dogfish, bullfrog, and green iguana, demonstrate the extent of the arterial network within the brain, the arterial segments obscured by overlying structures such as nerves, and identified in the bullfrog the venous cerebral circulation resulting from the centrifugal leptomeningeal arterial capillaries. The rotational 3D images separated superimposed arterial structures, and the sequential display of the 2D renderings clarifies the relationship of cut or overlapped arterial branches. Comparing the brain and arterial morphology of the dogfish, bullfrog, and green iguana demonstrates some of the evolutionary modifications in these vertebrates., (© 2022 The Authors. The Anatomical Record published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Association for Anatomy.)