Doctoral Dissertation Research: Skeletal morphology of early Homo sapiens

现代人起源的时间、地点和环境一直是古人类学家和公众感兴趣的问题。正在进行的研究继续完善我们对早期现代人的理解，这些研究必然依赖于稀少的化石证据。这一博士论文项目将通过描述在现代人类活动范围扩展到非洲以外的时间附近新发现的早期现代人类化石材料，为已知的关键时间和地点的化石记录做出贡献。该项目将支持对本科生的指导和培训，包括女大学生和第一代大学生。它还将支持青年研究人员与研究机构之间建立长期的积极联系，并支持他们继续参与研究和教育活动。该项目的成果将通过广播电台采访和其他媒体向公众公布。该项目包括对早期现代人类部分骨骼的骨骼解剖的原始描述，以及从同一沉积包中发现的更多更零碎的人类化石材料。这些化石是在中阿瓦什的哈利比发现的中石器时代的考古背景下发现的，初步确定的年代约为100 kya。这些化石的骨骼解剖将参考解剖学上的现代人类种群进行描述，并将完成Halibee化石与其最接近的化石近亲的系统比较，包括尼安德特人、直立人和按时间顺序排列的中间类群。由于更新世后颅骨化石记录的稀疏性，以及已知化石标本所表现出的半形性和衍生特征的可变组合，阻碍了对中更新世化石彼此之间以及与后来的现代人之间关系的理解。哈利比化石的年代和地理位置使它们对理解这些关系至关重要。

The timing, location, and circumstances of the origin of modern humans has long been of interest among paleoanthropologists and the public. Ongoing studies continue to refine our understanding of early modern humans, and these studies necessarily rely on sparse fossil evidence. This doctoral dissertation project will contribute to the known fossil record for a critical time and place by describing newly-recovered early modern human fossil material near the time of modern human range expansion beyond Africa. The project will support mentoring and training of undergraduate students, including female and first-generation college students. It will also support the establishment of long-standing positive connections between young researchers and research institutions, and their continued participation in research and educational activities. The results of this project will be communicated to the public via a broadcasted radio interview and other media. This project includes the original description of the skeletal anatomy of an early modern human partial skeleton, as well as additional, more fragmentary human fossil material recovered from the same sedimentary package. These fossils were recovered from a Middle Stone Age archaeological context at Halibee, Middle Awash, preliminarily dated to ~100 kya. The skeletal anatomy of these fossils will be described with reference to anatomically modern human populations, and systematic comparisons of the Halibee fossils with their closest fossil relatives will be completed, including Neanderthals, Homo erectus, and chronologically intermediate groups. Understanding how Middle Pleistocene fossils relate to one another and to later modern humans has been hindered by the sparseness of the Pleistocene postcranial fossil record, and by the variable combinations of plesiomorphic and derived traits displayed by the known fossil specimens. The chronological and geographic position of the Halibee fossils makes them critical to understanding these relationships.