People - 2004 Conference
Richard
Leakey is Visiting Professor of Anthropology, Stony Brook University
and Former Director of the
Kenya National Museums and the Kenya Wildlife Service. Leakey's field work
at Lake Natron on the Kenya-Tanzania Border, the Lower Omo Valley in Ethiopia,
and on the East shore of Lake Turkana produced a treasure trove of hominid
fossils that provides much of the record on which our understanding of
human evolution is built. To learn more about Richard Leakey, visit The
Leakey Foundation.
Stanley
Ambrose is
Associate Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Nutritional
Sciences at the University of Illinois,
where he is also Director of the Environmental
Isotope Paleobiogeochemistry Laboratory. He specializes in the application
of advanced scientific methods, including stable isotope biogeochemistry,
to the problems of paleoanthropology.
Zelalem
Assefa, who earned his doctorate at Stony Brook University,
is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution. His recent
work on the archaeology of Ethiopia's Kibish Formation has helped
to provide the first archaeological and behavioral context for the
early Homo
sapiens fossils recovered there.
Günter
Bräuer, a biological anthropologist, is Professor at the
University of Hamburg. After studying the widely scattered Middle and
Late Pleistocene hominid material from Africa, in 1981 he proposed the
watershed "Out
of Africa" model
of human evolution. He is co-editor of Continuity or
Replacement: Controversies in Homo sapiens evolution (1992).
Frank
Brown, Dean of the University of Utah’s College of Mines
and Earth Sciences, is a key figure in African paleolithic archaeology.
His analysis of the age and stratigraphy of deposits in Africa's Turkana
Basin has made possible the dating of Kenyanthropus
platyops and other
hominid fossils from the area.
Frederick
Grine, Professor and Chair of the Anthropology Department at
Stony Brook University, focuses on the reconstruction of early hominid
dietary
habits
from the
analysis of dental microwear, and the phylogenetic relationships among
species
of
Australopithecus,
Paranthropus, and Homo as deduced from fossil skulls
and teeth.
William
Jungers is Professor of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University.
His research interests include functional anatomy and biomechanics, morphometrics,
the evolution of Malagasy
primates, and early hominid locomotion. He is the editor of Size and
Scaling in Primate Evolution and coeditor of Reconstructing Behavior
in the Primate Fossil Record.
Marta
Mirazón Lahr is Director of the Duckworth Laboratory
at Cambridge University. Her work concerns morphological and
phylogenetic aspects
of modern human diversity, based on analysis of recent and fossil
skeletal material. She is also examining problems of human
growth,
nutrition,
and development from an evolutionary perspective.
Daniel
Lieberman is Professor of Biological
Anthropology at Harvard University. Lieberman's
research focuses on the problem of how to test hypotheses about human
evolution using skeletal and fossil data. He uses both experimental and
comparative methods to study how interactions between development and
function generate variations in the skeleton.
Emma
Mbua heads the Paleontology Department of the National Museums
of Kenya. She earned her doctorate
at
the University of Hamburg and has been involved in research that has
redefined
the origins of both modern man and genus Homo. She was the recipient
of the first Mary Leakey Award for Research in the Origin of Man
Sally
McBrearty is Professor of Anthropology at the
University of
Connecticut. Her academic interests include the origin of Homo sapiens,
Paleolithic archaeology, African prehistory, lithic technology, and
geoarchaeology.
Her current research project entails exploring the archaeology
and paleoenvironments of the Kapthurin Formation in Baringo, Kenya.
Maureen
O’Leary is Assistant Professor of Anatomical Sciences at
Stony Brook University. She researches the evolution of placental mammals
and studies empirical
and theoretical problems in systematics. She is currently leading a new
paleontological expedition to the Republic of Mali.
Osbjorn
Pearson is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at University of
New Mexico. He earned his
Ph.D. in Anthropological Sciences in 1997 from Stony Brook University. Dr.
Pearson has published numerous articles on a variety of
topics including the fossil evidence for the origin of modern humans, bone
biology, and zooarchaeology.
G.
Philip Rightmire is Distinguished Professor
of Anthropology at SUNY-Binghamton. His research focuses on
the evolution of the genus Homo, in particular the
origin and dispersal of Homo erectus at the beginning of the Pleistocene
and the ways in which this species was able to adapt to challenges
posed by
novel environments.
John
Shea is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University.
His research interests include paleolithic archaeology and paleoanthropology
of the Near East, Africa, and Europe; origin of modern humans; Neandertals;
lithic technology; and experimental archaeology.
Ian
Tattersall is Curator in the Division
of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History. He
has concentrated his research in two main
areas: analysis of the human fossil
record, and study of the ecology and systematics of the lemurs of
Madagascar. He has authored and co-authored several trade books, including
the recent Extinct
Humans (2000).
Thomas
Volman is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology
and the Archaeology Program at Cornell University. His research focuses
on
the
Stone Age archaeology of southern Africa, especially Middle Stone Age
industrial change, with recent work also on Earlier and Later Stone Age
technology.
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