On the Origin of Our Species: Darwin and Human Evolution
Monday, February 9, 2009, 4-5:30
Location: PIMA Auditorium, ASU Memorial Union 230
Sponsors: School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Institute of Human Origins, and School of Life Sciences
Moderator
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Mark Spencer
Institute of Human Origins
School of Human Evolution and Social Change
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Arizona State University
Dr. Spencer is a Research Associate with the Institute of Human Origins. His research focuses on the mechanics and evolution of the jaws and teeth in primates. Primates, including hominids, exhibit obvious diversity in the form of their skulls. Much of this diversity results from adaptation to the varying mechanical demands of differing diets. An understanding of the relationship between craniodental form and diet is therefore crucial to our inferences about feeding behavior in past species.
Dr. Spencer’s work addresses these issues by developing and testing the biomechanical concepts that underlie interpretations of jaw function and evolution. Of particular interest is how skull shape influences the way chewing forces are generated and distributed within the jaws, and how the morphology of the jaws and teeth may be adapted to resisted the stresses that occur during feeding. This work utilizes a range of methodological approaches, including biomechanical modeling, comparative morphology, and experimental techniques.
Current work includes research into the form and function of tooth roots, studies of the influence of chewing muscle function on patterns of temporomandibular joint loading, and a collaborative project that seeks to test a range of biomechanical hypotheses through the development of a Finite Element model of the primate skull.
Panelists
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Bernard Wood
GW University Professor of Human Origins
Professor of Human Evolutionary Anatomy at The George Washington University
Adjunct Senior Scientist at the National Museum of Natural History
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Don Johanson
Virginia M. Ullman Chair in Human Origins, School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Director of the Institute for Human Origins
Many consider Johanson to be among the most important and accomplished paleoanthropologists of our time. Over the course of his illustrious career he has produced some of the field’s groundbreaking discoveries, including the most widely known and thoroughly studied fossil find of the 20th century-the Lucy skeleton.
Since Charles Darwin posed the theory of evolution in his 1859 publication, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, scientists have speculated about humankind’s place in nature. Darwin postulated that not only was the human species a product of the evolutionary process, but deep in the prehistoric past, we actually shared a common ancestor with the African apes. Although the 20th century has been peppered with important fossil hominid finds from both eastern and southern Africa, it was Dr. Johanson’s 1974 discovery of a 3.2-million-year-old hominid fossil in Ethiopia that added a crucial link. Lucy, as the skeleton was called, prompted on-going debate and major revisions in our knowledge and understanding of the human evolutionary past. The skeleton possessed an intriguing mixture of ape-like features such as a projecting face and small brain, but also characters we consider human such as upright walking. Lucy continues to be a diadem in the crown of hominid fossils and serves as an important touchstone for all subsequent discoveries.
In the 34 years since Johanson earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, he has led field explorations in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and the Middle East, and effectively reached across multiple media platforms-hosting and narrating the Emmy nominated PBS/NOVA series In Search of Human Origins, co-authoring nine books, and lecturing at universities, corporations, and public forums-to share his findings and stimulate healthy debate. Driven by a notion that we cannot fully grasp who we are and where we are headed as a species until we have a more complete knowledge of our evolutionary roots, Johanson founded the Institute of Human Origins, a human-evolution think tank. He is an honorary board member of the Explorers Club, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and a distinguished member of the Siena Academy of Sciences in Italy. He also serves as the Virginia M. Ullman Chair in Human Origins at Arizona State University, where he teaches.
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Bill Kimbel
Virginia M. Ullman Professor of Natural History and the Environment, School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Professor and Science Director, Institute for Human Origins
William H. Kimbel, who moved to Arizona State University with the Institute of Human Origins (IHO) in 1997, is Virginia M. Ullman Professor of Natural History and the Environment in ASU’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change and Director of the IHO. He conducts field, laboratory, and theoretical research in paleoanthropology, with primary foci on Plio-Pleistocene hominid evolution in Africa and the late Pleistocene of the Middle East.
Recent field work has taken Kimbel to the Hadar hominid site in Ethiopia, where he has co-directed paleoanthropological research since 1990, and to northern Israel, where he has collaborated with Israeli colleagues on the excavation of Middle Paleolithic cave deposits. He has also conducted field work in Tanzania (Olduvai Gorge), Tunisia, and China. His lab-oriented interests are in the evolution of hominid skull morphology and function, variation and systematics, and the concept of the species as applied to paleoanthropological problems. Since 1989 Kimbel has been Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on eight National Science Foundation and other research grants totaling $775,000.
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Curtis Marean
Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Dr. Marean received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1990, and is now a member of the Institute of Human Origins and School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. His research interests focus on the origins of modern humans, the prehistory of Africa, the study of animal bones from archaeological sites, and climates and environments of the past. In the area of the origins of modern humans, he is particularly interested in questions about foraging strategies, for example when humans became effective hunters of large antelope, and the timing and processes underlying the evolution of modern human behavior. Dr. Marean has a special interest in human occupation of grassland and coastal ecosystems, and the role people play in the form of these ecosystems.
Dr. Marean conducts a variety of studies using zooarchaeology, the study of animal bones, and taphonomy, the study of how bones become fossils. In particular, Dr. Marean focuses on experimental taphonomy and the replication of bone destruction processes with the goal of refining zooarchaeological methods. His work in this area has had a profound impact on zooarchaeological methodology and our understandings of Neanderthals and early modern human hunting behavior. He, along with his student Yoshiko Abe, has recently developed a novel image-analysis zooarchaeological recording system that utilizes GIS software. This approach is a substantial improvement in zooarchaeological methodology.
He has conducted research in Kenya, Tanzania, and Somalia, and since 1991 has been conducting field research in coastal South Africa. He is the principal investigator for the South African Coast Paleoclimate, Paleoenvironment, Paleoecology, Paleoanthropology (SACP4) project focused around Mossel Bay in South Africa. The goal of this large international project, funded by the National Science Foundation and the Hyde Family Foundation, is to develop a complete climatic and environmental curve for southern Africa spanning 400,000 to 30,000 years ago. This will have implications for our understanding of modern human origins, but also will inform us on the response of terrestrial ecosystems to potential long-term climate change, and thus be directly relevant to the future of humanity in the light of future climatic shifts.