About the Scientists
Dr. Meave Leakey is a Research Associate in the Paleontological Department of the National Museum of Kenya. She worked with her husband, Richard Leakey, in the 1970’s, discovering and reconstructing skulls KNM-ER 1470 and KNM-ER 3733. In 1995, Dr. Leakey discovered fossil representing Australopithecus anamensis. The 4.1 million-year-old specimens were, at the time, the earliest evidence of bipedalism in our ancestors. In 2001, skull KNM-WT 40000 was published by Meave Leakey. Representing Kenyanthropus platyops, the 3.5 million-year-old skull challenges the hypothesis that the ancestor of modern humans was Australopithecus afarensis, represented by the famous “Lucy” skeleton. At the very least, skull 40000 suggests that hominid populations were more diverse 3.5 million-years-ago than once thought. Dr. Leakey does most of her field work in Kenya.
Dr. Tim White is a professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. White assisted with the excavation of the Laetoli footprints, 3.6 million-year-old footprints, undoubtedly made by upright walking hominids. By the age of 28, he had named, described, and united fossils found at Laetoli, and in Ethiopia, into one species, Australopithecus afarensis. Although controversial at the time, the interpretation has held. In 1999, White’s team announced the discovery of BOU-VP-12/130, the type specimen of a new species of Australopithecus, garhi. In 2001, his team published fossils representing 5.5 million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba, the oldest suggested bipedal hominid found to that date. Recently, White co-authored a paper announcing BOU-VP-2/66, a 1.0 million-year-old skull that helps better understand the evolution of Homo erectus. Dr. White is currently reconstructing a 4.5 million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus ramidus skeleton.
Dr. Ian Tattersall is the Curator of the Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, and Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. He has written numerous books on hominid evolution including, Extinct Humans, The Fossil Trail, Becoming Human, and Monkey in the Mirror. Dr. Tattersall studied the biology and evolution of lemurs before civil unrest in Madagascar forced him to focus his efforts on his other passion, hominid evolution. Although fluent in all 6-million years of human evolution, Dr. Tattersall is particularly interested in the last million years, the evolution of Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens, and the evolution of modern human behavior. Dr. Tattersall is currently working on a complete catalogue and description of every hominid fossil ever discovered.