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About Me
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I am a researcher based in the Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, where I co-direct the AMNH Biological Anthropology Laboratory. I study the key adaptations defining different stages of ape and human evolution. I am interested in the major evolutionary transitions, such as the split between the human and ape lineages (apes + humans = 'hominoids'). Living hominoids constitute a relict of a once highly diversified group. During the Miocene (23 Ma to 5.3 Ma) in Africa, Europe and Asia there was a greater diversity of apes that did not resemble or move around like any primates alive today. Thus, current debates in paleoanthropology focus on elucidating the functional morphology and shape affinities of these fossil forms. It is from some of these Miocene apes that both modern great apes and earliest hominins (earliest ancestors of the human family) evolved. Thus, only by studying the evolution of fossil apes and their environment in combination with available early hominins we will be able to provide realistic models of ape and human evolution and thus better understand human origins.
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My research seeks to address these issues through several avenues of investigation:
(1) Paleontological field work to recover new fossil apes and humans (2) Novel and traditional morphometric techniques to quantitatively characterize three-dimensional morphologies (3) Phylogenetic comparative methods and evolutionary modeling to elucidate the tempo and mode of ape and human evolution (4) Implementing biological data form living primates (e.g,. locomotor behavior, molecular phylogenetics) in paleobiological inferences (5) Stopping from time to time to think: Which are the right questions that we should be asking? Follow my research on ResearchGate and Google Scholar. |
