Dissertation Research: Plio/Pleistocene Carnivoran Guilds: Implications for Hominid Paleoecology

许多人类学家认为，食肉动物作为捕食者、竞争者和屠体提供者，在人类进化过程中发挥了重要作用。然而，这些关系的细节仍然模糊，很大程度上是因为缺乏关于灭绝的食肉动物生态适应的定量研究。对大型肉食动物的功能形态和行会结构的研究将极大地提高我们对非洲更新世-更新世人类-食肉动物相互作用的推断的质量。这位研究生将测试有关捕食者关键行为的假设，例如它们将猎物藏在树上的能力，杀死大型猎物的能力，以及从猎物中觅食的能力。这对原始人进化研究具有重要意义，因为它将填补有关我们祖先的古生态的重要信息。

Many anthropologists have suggested that carnivores played an important role in human evolution, as predators, competitors, and carcass providers. However, the details of these relationships remain fuzzy, largely because of a dearth of quantitative work on the ecological adaptations of the extinct carnivores. This research in the functional morphology and guild structure of large bodied carnivores will greatly improve the quality of our inferences concerning hominid-carnivore interactions in the African Plio-Pleistocene. The graduate student will test hypotheses concerning critical behaviors of the predators, such as their ability to cache prey in trees, kill large prey, and scavenge from kills. It is significant to hominid evolutionary studies because it will fill in significant information on the paleoecology of our ancestors.