The Leakey Foundation

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Tuesday, October 9, 2012

6:30 pm at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, Houston Texas

Neanderthals were the first fossil hominins discovered and, since then, have been the most studied. However, it is only in the last two decades that entirely new techniques have made new and fascinating insights into their biology and behavior possible. Beyond their odd anatomy, we are now able to explore the mechanisms of their birth and growth, the way their brains developed, and the chemical signals left in their bones from their diet. The decoding of their genome has opened a new era in Paleoanthropology. Ultimately, understanding the rise and the fall of the Neanderthals will help us to elucidate the unrivaled evolutionary success of our own species.

Dr. Jean-Jacques Hublin

Director, Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute

Dr. Jean-Jacques Hublin is currently a Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany), where he serves as the Director of the Department of Human Evolution. Initially his research focused on the origin and evolution of Neanderthals and he has proposed an accretion model for the emergence of the Neanderthal lineage that roots it in the time of the Mid-Pleistocene. He developed the use of medical and virtual imaging in the reconstruction and study of fossil hominids. He has led field operations in North Africa, Spain and France.

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Please call the Museum Box Office at (713) 639–4629 or purchase your ticket online

Price of event: $18 General Admission, $12 Leakey Foundation/HMNS members, $13 Group Rate (for groups larger than 20)

National Sponsor: Wells Fargo Bank

Local Sponsors: The Brown Foundation, Inc. and Houston Museum of Natural Sciences