Monthly Archives: February 2015

02.23.15

Grantee Spotlight: Samantha Porter

Grantee Spotlight
Samantha Porter in the lithics lab at the University of Minnesota The next grantee from our fall 2014 granting cycle is Samantha Porter. She is a PhD candidate from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and her project is entitled “Investigating cultural transmission across the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition in Western Europe.” Around 40,000 years ago, anatomically modern… more »
02.11.15

Survival of the fleetest, smartest, or fattest?

Speaker Series, Video
Our understanding of human evolution has grown exponentially since Darwin’s time. This week marks the 206th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, so we’re sharing a Darwin-related Leakey Foundation lecture from our archives. In this lecture, recorded in 2009 at the Field Museum in Chicago, Daniel Lieberman of Harvard University discusses the evolution and dysevolution… more »
02.09.15

Grantee Spotlight: Maura Tyrrell

Grantee Spotlight
The next fall 2014 grantee we would like to introduce to you is Maura Tyrrell. She is a PhD candidate from the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and her dissertation project is entitled “Effect of competition on male coalition patterns in crested macaques.” Maura Tyrrell and a crested macaque My dissertation focuses on the social relationships between… more »
02.05.15

Cranium discovery sheds light on early human migration

In the News
Leakey Foundation grantees Israel Hershkovitz and Ofer Marder led an international team of archaeologists who discovered a 55,000 year old cranium in Manot Cave in Israel. Their discovery was described last week in the journal Nature. Photo courtesy of : Clara Amit, Israel Antiquities Authority A key event in human evolution was the expansion of modern humans of African origin across Eurasia, replacing… more »
02.04.15

Grantee Spotlight: Naomi Cleghorn

Grantee Spotlight
Naomi Cleghorn, University of Texas at Arlington, was awarded a Leakey Foundation research grant in the fall of 2014 for her project entitled “Investigating a rare Early Later Stone Age site at Knysna, South Africa.” Naomi Cleghorn at Pinnacle Point site 5/6, Mossel Bay, South Africa Despite widespread interest in the potential origins of modern human cognitive, social, and technological… more »