Diversity in Australopithecus
Tracking the Earliest Bipeds
REGISTRATION FULL
Due to an overwhelming response, we are sold out for this year's Human Evolution Symposium. A few seats might open up due to cancellations, but we CANNOT GUARANTEE IT. Any openings that might occur will be available onsite on a strictly first-come, first-serve basis. We apologize for this, and encourage you to register early next year. Thank you for your continued interest, and we look forward to seeing you at future events.
Live Webcast of Symposium
Click here for a live webcast of the symposium on Tuesday, September 25. To access, you may either click directly on the link or copy the URL into Quicktime. To copy the link into Quicktime, right click on the link, “Copy Link” then open Quicktime, use the pulldown menu File -> “Open URL” then paste your link and click “OK”.
Convened by Richard Leakey, the 4th Annual Human Evolution Symposium is a full-day event featuring many of the foremost scholars in the field. The Symposium will be held on the campus of Stony Brook University. For more information, e-mail turkanabasin@stonybrook.edu or call (631) 632-5800.
The 2007 Symposium focuses on the early hominids that changed the way paleoanthropologists thought about human evolution. The 1925 discovery, in South Africa by Raymond Dart, of a small creature he named Australopithecus africanus showed that our early ancestors were from the continent of Africa. While controversial at the time, it turned interest from exploring for human ancestors in Asia and Europe to Africa. Since that time, species of Australopithecus have been found in many other parts of the continent. A. afarensis has been recovered in Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Kenya; A. bahrelghazali in Chad; A. garhi in Ethiopia; A. anamensis and the related genus Kenyanthropus in Kenya, and many more A. africanus fossils have been recovered in South Africa. This collection has often been grouped under the name "gracile australopithecines" and they range in time from 4.2 to ~2.5 million years ago.
The 2007 Symposium and Workshop will focus on understanding the phylogenetic relations among these many species of Australopithecus as well as their similarities and differences. We will explore the phylogeny of the group with an eye towards understanding the tempo and mode of evolution through this time period. While A. anamensis–A. afarensis has been shown to be a continuous lineage, what is the relationship to A. africanus and to Kenyanthropus? What is the relationship between A. bahrelghazali and its more eastern relatives? Which one of these species likely gave rise to Homo? What is the relationship between these taxa and the more robust species ?
The symposium and workshop will also address biogeography and ecology of this widespread and diverse genus. Were different species ingabiting different environments? Were there ecological differences between hominins living in the more temperate southern African region and those around the equator? Is there any evidence of geographic connections between species or were they separated by major barriers? Do other Pliocene mammals show similar patterns of distribution? How is the fossil record biased by the nature of the geological deposits in which the fossils have been recovered?.
Finally, the participants will investigate many aspects of the behavior and life history of Australopithecus. We now have many insights into the growth and development of this genus through first find of the Taung child, A. africanus, in 1925, and the new A. afarensis child, "Selem," announced in 2006. Did these early hominins have a human-like or ape-like pattern of growth? What do we know about the diet of different species? The locomotor behavior of Australopithecus has been a subject of ongoing debate since the initial discovery. Everyone now agrees that these early hominids walked uporight on two legs, but did they also spend a large part of their life in trees? What are the differences and similarities between different species? By addressing these and other questions, the workshop participants hope to summarize the current areas on consensus and disagreement, and to identify productive avenues for future research.
About the Turkana Basin Institute
In conjunction with Richard, Meave, and Louise Leakey, Stony Brook University has created the Turkana Basin Institute (TBI), an international research institute to facilitate and support paleontological, archeological, and geological research in the Turkana Basin. Read more...
Stony Brook University Human Evolution Symposium Planning Committee
Richard Leakey
Committee Chair
Professor,
Anthropology
Stony Brook University
John Fleagle
Distinguished Professor,
Anatomical Sciences
Stony Brook University
Frederick Grine
Professor,
Anthropology
Stony Brook University
Lawrence Martin
Professor, Anthropology &
Dean of the Graduate School
Stony Brook University
Kaye Reed
2007 Workshop Symposium Organizer
Associate Professor & Associate Director,
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Arizona State University
John Shea
Associate Professor,
Anthropology
Stony Brook University