Building the evolutionary history of humanity – From the “armchair” to the field (and back)
As part of the 'Perspectives from the MFO' Lecture Series
Phylogenetic modelling: Representation of the Homo genus cranial evolution.
Aurélien Mounier (Musée de l'Homme, Paris & MFO)
From a bipedal ape to a talking ape, the hominins that make up the evolutionary history of the human family have changed significantly over the last two million years. By describing these morphological changes, paleoanthropologists seek to build a framework within which fossils can be classified and positioned according to their evolutionary history. But fossils are rare, poorly preserved, and therefore, provide only a partial picture of the events that led to the emergence of our species Homo sapiens. This seminar will introduce the basic concepts that have ruled Palaeoanthropology for almost 200 years, the conundrum faced by palaeoanthropologists when trying to decipher the evolutionary history of our lineage, and the tools available to palaeoanthropologists to overcome it: from innovative phylogenetic modelling tools to archaeological excavations in the Kenyan desert.
Aurélien Mounier is a CNRS research fellow in palaeoanthropology based in the Musée de l’Homme in Paris (Histoire Naturelle des Humanités Préhistoriques, UMR 7194) where he is co-directro of the palaeoanthropological research team (PaléoFED). He is also affiliated to the Turkana Basin Institute (Kenya) and the National Museums of Kenya. His research focuses on the evolutionary history of the human family and the evolutionary processes that have shaped our species, Homo sapiens. In this context, he studies the fossil record of the genus Homo using interdisciplinary approaches based on the use of innovative methods and computer tools. He is leading a French archaeological mission in northern Kenya (West Turkana), which aims at strengthening our knowledge on African populations that lived a million years ago. The Trans-Evol archaeological mission is a pluridisciplinary collaboration bringing together 23 international scholars from nine institutions, among which the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford.
Aurélien Mounier is also the President of the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris and the Associate Editor in Palaeoanthropology of the Comptes Rendus Palevol, the Earth and Planetary Science journal of the French Académie des sciences.
