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.
Susan Antón is Associate Professor of Anthropology at New York University and joint-editor of the Journal of Human Evolution. She conducts field work in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Her research focuses on questions concerning the dispersal and evolution of the genus Homo and our impact on hominin native ecosystems.
Ofer Bar-Yosef is MacCurdy Professor of Anthropology and Curator of Paleolithic Archaeology in the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. His research activities span the full sweep of the Paleolithic, from early hominin dispersals to the origins of agriculture. Bar-Yosef is co-director of excavations at Ubeidiya (Israel), and numerous other arhcaeological sites.
Miriam Belmaker is completing her Ph.D. at Hebrew University. Her research concerns faunal and taphonomic analyses in conjunction with the development of quantitative paleoecological models, with a focus on how ecological processes affect Lower Pleistocene hominin dispersal events. She has participated in ‘Ubeidiya research projects since 1997.
Paul Bingham is Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Stony Brook University’s School of Medicine. Research interests include basic molecular mechanisms in cellular and developmental processes, cell biology of cancer, and evolutionary biology of humans. He received his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Harvard.
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.
Parth Chauhan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Stone Age Institute (Indiana U.). Research interests include Mode 1 technologies in Eurasia and paleoanthropology of the Indian subcontinent from an ecological perspective. Co-director of the Narmada Basin Paleoanthropology Project, he is investigating Paleolithic sites in the Siwalik Hills. See Research Gallery.
Russell Ciochon, Professor of Anthropology at University of Iowa, is co-author of Dragon Bone Hill: An Ice Age Saga of Homo erectus (2004). His work focuses on the first arrival of early Homo and the evolution of Homo erectus in Asia. Current field projects include Homo evolution in the Sangiran Dome and the taphonmy of the Zhoukoudian “Peking Man” site.
Robin Dennell is British Academy Research Professor at the University of Sheffield. His main field research has been into the Early Palaeolithic of Pakistan, primarily from fieldwork in the Soan Valley and Pabbi Hills. His current research is a book for Cambridge University Press on the Palaeolithic Settlement of Asia, from the late Pliocene to last glacial maximum.
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.
Yamei Hou is Research Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Paleoanthropology at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. She studies some of the earliest Paleolithic sites in China, focusing on technology and cognitive development of early humans.
Meave Leakey is Adjunct Professor at Stony Brook University; Explorer-in-Residence, National Geographic Society; co-director, Koobi Fora Research Project; and Research Associate, National Museums of Kenya. She has worked annually in the Turkana Basin since 1969. Current field research is focused on the time of emergence of Homo erectus.
Margaret Lewis is Associate Professor of Biology at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Her research focuses on reconstructing the behavior and ecology of extinct carnivorans and potential interrelationships between carnivorans and hominins. Recent work concerns turnover patterns and species richness in eastern African carnivorans of the Plio-Pleistocene.
David Lordkipanidze is a Director of the Georgian National Museum. His research interests focus on paleoanthropology and Plio-Pleistocene paloenvironment of the Caucasus. He is leader of the international research project of Dmanisi, where the earliest human remains in Eurasia has been discovered.
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.
Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro is ICREA Research Professor at University of Tarragona, Spain. He is co-director of the Orce Project. His research focuses on the study of the ecological scenario of faunal and human dispersals out of Africa. He is also interested in systematics and paleobiogeography of Plio-Pleistocene large mammals.
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.
Michael Petraglia is University Lecturer in Human Evolution at Cambridge University. His research interests include the paleolithic archaeology of the Arabian peninsula and the Indian subcontinent, the evolution of hominin cognition, and the dispersal of hominins out of Africa.
Rajeev Patnaik is Research Scientist at the Centre of Advanced Study in Geology, Panjab University, India. He works on the evolution of Siwalik small mammals in response to climate changes. He is also interested in dispersal of large mammals, including Homo. between Africa and India, and runs a project in the hominin bearing, Central Narmada Valley deposits of India.
Richard Potts heads the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program. His research on human evolution as a response to environmental instability has stimulated new research in several scientific fields. He leads excavation projects in Kenya and China, comparing evidence of early human behavior and environments from East Africa to East Asia.
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.
James Rossie is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University. His research focuses on the evolution of apes. He works on the phylogenetic relationships among Miocene and living apes, their biogeographic history, and the development of analytical methods that address these questions. He conducts field research in the middle to late Miocene of Kenya.
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.
Fred Spoor obtained his Ph.D. from Utrecht University and joined University College London in 1994, where he is Professor of Evolutionary Anatomy. He participates in the Koobi Fora Research Project, studying human fossils newly found in the Lake Turkana region, and explores the evolution of the primate inner ear. He is joint-editor of the Journal of Human Evolution.
Katheryn Twiss is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University. Her research focuses on the Near Eastern Neolithic. As a zooarchaeologist, she uses faunal remains to study past human-animal interactions. She is also interested in the archaeology of food production and use. She received her PhD in 2003 from the University of California at Berkeley.
Yahdi Zaim is Professor of Paleontology at Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia. His work focuses on vertebrate and hominid fossils and quaternary geology of Indonesia. Current research projects include Upper Miocene whale fossils, vertebrate fossils from West Java, and Geoarchaeology of East Java.