Investigating the Importance of Bone Marrow Consumption in Human Evolution

该奖项是美国国家科学基金会社会、行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）计划的一部分。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行为期两年的培训，并鼓励博士后进行独立研究。美国国家科学基金会寻求促进科学界各阶层的科学家，包括那些未被充分代表的群体的科学家，参与其研究项目和活动；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的一个重要的专业发展阶段。每个博士后必须解决各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在科罗拉多州立大学人类与地理学系的Michael Pante博士的赞助下，这项博士后奖学金支持一位早期职业科学家，研究骨髓对我们人类祖先进化的重要性，以及狩猎大型动物以获取食物的兴起。新技术将被应用于分析与骨髓采集有关的骨折模式，这些骨髓采集来自现代破碎动物骨骼，以及对我们理解人类起源很重要的几个动物考古收藏品。生存是人类经济的基础，大型动物作为食物资源的引入和狩猎都代表了生存方式的巨大转变，这对人类的社会行为（如合作、冲突和认知）产生了深远的影响，从而对我们的进化史产生了重大影响。该项目的目标是测试骨髓作为早期人类开始使用大型动物食物资源的途径的作用，以及它对人类掠食性模式兴起的影响。在灵长类动物中，人类掠食模式（Human Predatory Pattern， HPP）是一种独特的人类行为，即捕食体型相同或更大的动物。HPP的进化涉及两个关键创新：主动狩猎和开发大型动物食物资源（LAFRs）。人类饮食和HPP中包含的lafr可能为人类成为超级捕食者奠定了基础，甚至促成了我们属人的起源。然而，这种行为模式进化的机制尚不清楚。该项目将利用3D扫描、数字表征和机器学习等新技术，结合传统方法，分析骨折模式，并验证最近提出的假说，即HPP来源于大型动物的骨内营养物质。这一假说预测，早期人类在其他形式的屠杀之前就已经开始为获取骨髓而折断骨头了。这一假设将通过比较早期人类骨骼变化特征的历时性方法得到验证。如果证据证实人类对lafr的利用随着时间的推移发生了转变，这将支持这一假设，表明人属的兴起必须通过清除骨内营养物质作为HPP的前身来解释。这个项目包含了大量的知识价值，无论是在考古科学领域，还是在更广泛的任何领域，3D物体形状在研究中使用。首先，它将通过测试与现代人类行为集合有关的一个主要假设，推进我们对人类进化的理解。其次，它将推进3.6 Ma（晚上新世），1.8 Ma和0.9 Ma（更新世）之间的人类-食肉动物相互作用的认识，这一时期的早期研究很少受到关注。第三，该项目将开发使用3D模型的数据提取方法，该方法对机器学习应用有效，并广泛适用于许多其他考古和古生物学组合。第四，这项工作扩展了数学家、计算机和数据科学家以及古人类学家之间的合作，以创造创新的技术工具，使研究人员（人类学内外）能够轻松地将他们的专业知识与可靠和可复制的数学方法相结合，以研究对象。最后，该项目将创建一个广泛的研究质量的3D模型和数据集的开放访问数据库，这将促进未来的研究项目。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Michael Pante at the Department of Anthropology and Geography of Colorado State University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the importance of bone marrow to the evolution of our human ancestors and the rise of hunting large animals for food. New technology will be applied to analyze bone breakage patterns related to marrow procurement from modern collections of broken animal bones as well as several zooarchaeological collections that are important for our understanding of human origins. Subsistence underpins human economics, and both the introduction of large animals as a food resource and hunting represent dramatic shifts in subsistence that had profound implications for human social behavior such as cooperation, conflict, and cognition, and thus, major impacts on our evolutionary history.The goal of this project is to test the role of bone marrow as the avenue by which early humans began using large animal food resources and its influence on the rise of the Human Predatory Pattern. Among primates, the Human Predatory Pattern (HPP) is the uniquely human behavior of hunting animals that are of equal or larger body size. Evolution of the HPP involves two key innovations: active hunting and exploitation of large animal food resources (LAFRs). The inclusion of LAFRs in the human diet and the HPP may have set the stage for humans to become super-predators, and even precipitated the origin of our genus, Homo. Yet, the mechanism through which this behavioral pattern evolved is unclear. This project will leverage new technological advances in 3D scanning, digital characterization, and machine learning, combined with traditional methods, to analyze bone breakage patterns and test the recently proposed hypothesis that the HPP derived from scavenging large animals for in-bone nutrients. This hypothesis predicts that early humans were breaking bones for marrow prior to other forms of butchery. This hypothesis will be tested by taking a diachronic approach that compares signatures of bone modifications made by early humans. Should the evidence confirm a transition in human exploitation of LAFRs through time, this would support the hypothesis, indicating that the rise of the genus Homo must be interpreted through the lens of scavenging for in-bone nutrients as the precursor to the HPP. This project comprises substantial intellectual merit, both within archaeological sciences but also more broadly in any field where 3D object shape is used in research. First, it will advance our understanding of human evolution by testing a major hypothesis associated with the assembly of modern human behaviors. Second, it will advance knowledge of human-carnivore interactions between 3.6 Ma (Late Pliocene), 1.8 Ma and 0.9 Ma (Pleistocene), the earlier time period having received little attention in this regard. Third, this project will develop methods of data extraction using 3D models that are effective for machine learning applications and broadly applicable to many other archaeological and paleontological assemblages. Fourth, this work extends collaborations among mathematicians, computer and data scientists, and paleoanthropologists to create innovative technological tools to enable researchers (within and beyond anthropology) to easily integrate their expertise with reliable and replicable mathematical approaches to research on objects. Finally, this project will create an extensive open-access database of research-quality 3D models and datasets that will facilitate future research projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.