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Center
for the Study of Human Origins 25 Waverly Place telephone: |
CSHO News
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July 2008
Five Anthropology graduate students, Tom Rein, Joe Califf, Steve Worthington, Mike Montague, and Andres Link have been awarded research grants.
- Tom
Rein
Leakey Foundation General Research Grant
“Locomotor function and phylogeny: implications for interpreting
extinct hominoid morphology” - Mike
Montague
Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
"A genetic study of the color vision polymorphism in wild squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciurreus) - Steve
Worthington
Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, National Science Foundation
"Systematics of Middle to Late Miocene Hominoidea"
June 2008
Rita Wright is featured in three articles in Science as part of a special entitled Unmasking the Indus. |
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Terry Harrison is featured by ScienceNews regarding his excavation of ancient apes in China, including the earliest-known ancestral gibbons.
March 2008
New info on the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) can be found via Nature News
February 2008
Rita Wright is interviewed by Scienceline
January 2008
Two Anthropology graduate students, Kirstin Sterner and Andres Link have both been awarded NYU Deans Dissertation Fellowships.
- Kirstin
Sterner
Evolution of Primate Innate Immune Defense and Adaptation to Viral Infection - Andres
Link
Socio-Ecological Determinants of Fission-Fusion Sociality in White-Bellied Spider Monkeys (Ateles belzebuth) in Yasuni National Park, Ecuador
Shara
Bailey discusses
teeth and evolution on a show called "In Conversation" on ABC Radio
National Thursday Jan 24 at 7:25 pm (Australian, Eastern Standard
Time). To listen, go to www.abc.net.au and click your way to the "In
Conversation" program via Radio National.
Terry Harrison is interviewed
by Nature regarding
the protection and preservation of the famous Laetoli footprints in Tanzania.
December 2007
Rita Wright is interviewed in NYU Research.
October 2007
On October 6th, the Wenner Gren Foundation and CSHO co-sponsord an international conference and gala in honor of Cliff Jolly, entitled "Evolutionary Anthropology at the Interface: A Celebration of Cliff Jolly's Contributions to the Field."
September 2007
Susan Anton is interviewed by NPR on her Nature article.
August 2007
Susan Anton published a recent article in Nature entitled "Implications of new early Homo fossils from Ileret, east of Lake Turkana, Kenya."
April 2007
Dr. Tony DiFiore is awarded a Leakey Foundation Grant for his project "Kinship, Behavior, and Social Structure in Western Amazonian Ateline Primates".
March 2007
The
New York Times features Dr. Randall
White and his prolific archaeological career working
in the Vezere Valley of France.
December 2006
The
proceedings of The
‘Neanderthals Revisited: New Approaches and Perspectives’ conference,
held at New York University (January 27-29, 2005) is published, edited by Katerina
Harvati and Terry Harrison.
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Harvati,
K. & Harrison T. (Eds). 2006 Neanderthals Revisited:
New Approaches and Perspectives. Dordrecht:
Springer.
Recent years have witnessed
important scientific breakthroughs in the study of Neanderthals and their
place in human evolution, which have transformed our appreciation of
this group's paleobiology and evolution. This volume presents cutting-edge
research by leading scientists re-examinig the major debates in Neanderthal
research with the use of innovative state-of-the-art methods and exciting
new theoretical approaches. Topics addressed include the re-evaluation
of Neanderthal anatomy, inferred adaptations and habitual activities,
developmental patterns, phylogenetic relationships, and the Neanderthal
extinction; new methods include computer tomography, 3D geometric morphometrics,
ancient DNA and bioenergetics. The diverse contributions offer
fresh insights and advances in Neanderthal and modern human origins research.
Dr Randall White has published
a new book on the Abri du Poisson affair.
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White, R. W. 2006. L'affaire de l'abri du Poisson:
Patrie et préhistoire. Périgueux: Editions Fanlac.
Inthe valley known as Gorge d’Enfer in the Vézère
Valley of SW France, there is a rock shelter with a 25,000 year-old sculpted
salmon on its ceiling. This bas-relief is surrounded by chisel and drill
marks left in 1912 when an attempt was made to extract it for sale to
a German museum. The Swiss archaeologist Otto Hauser, very active at
the time in the region, is most frequently blamed for this aborted attempt
at antiquities trafficking.
Using public and private archives in France, Germany and the US, the author recounts this complicated affair step by step, dispensing with the myth that the sculpture was saved by a simple, forceful intervention by the French prehistorian Denis Peyrony. The administrative and legal procedures actually took more than three years.
The story that has been told to generations of prehistorians is largely false and hides a complex reality. The removal of the sculpture was entirely conceived by French locals. When the director of the Berlin museum came to the region in 1912 to negotiate the purchase of the salmon, it was at the unsollicited invitation of the site’s owner. Hauser had nothing to do with planning, organizing, extracting or selling this important work of Paleolithic art. The role of Denis Peyrony turns out to be much less heroic than is often imagined.
The whole Abri du Poisson affair can only be understood by situating it in the context of the times, marked by a crisis of national identity ; the German military threat ; an impoverished French rural population ; an absence of legislation protecting archaeological objects and monuments ; the lack of funds in France for the acquisition of collections by French museums ; administrative incompetence ; and severe conflicts among prehistorians.
November 2006
Professor Terry Harrison is elected as a fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
October 2006
The Wenner Gren Foundation and CSHO are pleased to announce a workshop and symposium, organized in honor of Cliff Jolly, entitled "Evolutionary Anthropology at the Interface" to be held in October 5-6, 2007.
May 2006
A newly discovered catarrhine primate from the early Miocene site of Napak IX in Uganda has been named Lomorupithecus harrisoni, after Terry Harrison.
- Rossie JB and MacLatchy L. 2006 A new pliopithecoid genus from the early Miocene of Uganda. Journal of Human Evolution 50: 568-586.
November 2005
Professor Cliff
Jolly is elected as a fellow to the American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Denise Su begins a position
as a post doctoral scholar at UC Berekely Department of Integrative Biology
in Tim White's laboratory.
Ryan Raaum begins a position as a post doctoral scholar at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Department of Anthropology in Connie Mulligan's laboratory.
