Doctoral Dissertation Research: Phylogenetic relationships of Mid-Late Miocene hominoids: implications for understanding great ape and human evolution

类人猿、人类和他们的祖先一直是大量研究的对象，但关于他们共同的进化历史，直到人类谱系和直立行走的出现，还有更多的东西需要了解。该项目旨在更准确地确定化石和现生猿类之间的关系，并利用这些信息更好地了解特征猿类和人类运动行为的进化，包括我们最近的化石祖先。该项目具有更广泛的影响，包括生成一个大型解剖数据集，供未来免费使用，以及由共同PI促进生物人类学的多样性，共同PI是一名女研究生，也是几个旨在吸引年轻女孩参与STEM领域的组织的积极成员。本研究的主要目的是产生一个强大的干和冠人科的系统发育作为基础，用于测试竞争的系统发育假说，并探讨问题的极性，地理和进化时间的运动和位置的行为特征的类人猿和人类使用祖先的状态重建。字符将从头骨和postcranium采样，特别强调从postcranial骨骼包括新的数量和多态性字符。简约和贝叶斯方法将被用来推断系统发育和衡量竞争的系统发育假说的相对支持。该项目代表了迄今为止对中新世中晚期人科动物进行的最全面的系统发育分析，并将为早期人科动物和猿类系统学以及古生物学的未来研究提供必要的基础。

Great apes, humans, and their ancestors have been the subject of substantial research, but there is much more to be learned about their shared evolutionary history leading up to the advent of the hominin lineage and upright walking. This project aims to more accurately determine relationships among fossil and living apes, and to use this information to better understand the evolution of characteristic ape and human locomotor behaviors, including those of our recent fossil ancestors. The project has broader impacts that include the generation of a large anatomical dataset that will be made freely accessible for future use, and the promotion of diversity in biological anthropology by the co-PI, a female graduate student and active member of several organizations aimed at engaging young girls in STEM fields. The primary objective of this study is to generate a robust phylogeny of stem and crown Hominidae to be used as a basis for testing competing phylogenetic hypotheses, and exploring questions about the polarity, geography, and evolutionary timing of the locomotor and positional behaviors characterizing great apes and humans using ancestral state reconstruction. Characters will be sampled from the skull and postcranium, with particular emphasis on the inclusion of novel quantitative and polymorphic characters from the postcranial skeleton. Parsimony and Bayesian methods will be used to infer phylogeny and to measure the relative support for competing phylogenetic hypotheses. This project represents the most comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of Mid-Late Miocene hominoids carried out to date and will provide a necessary foundation for future research in early hominin and ape systematics and paleobiology.