From the Field: Kelly Ostrofsky, Uganda
Leakey Foundation grantee Kelly Ostrofsky spent the last several months working at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda, getting to know the mountain gorillas that live in the Ruhija sector of the forest.
Grantee Spotlight: Kelly Ostrofsky
Leakey Foundation grantee Kelly Ostrofsky studies how wild apes move and climb in their natural habitats. As our closest living relatives, these apes provide an important comparative context for understanding how our ancestors may have moved and climbed.
Evolution and the Mammalian Spine
"Nearly all mammals have the same number of cervical vertebrae, no matter how long or short their necks are--humans, giraffes, mice, whales, and platypuses all have exactly seven cervical vertebrae," said Jeff Spear, a doctoral student from New York University, and part of a team whose Leakey Foundation supported research explored why this characteristic has stayed the same through time and across species.
Surprising trunk rotational capabilities in chimpanzees
Nathan Thompson is a PhD candidate at Stony Brook University who was awarded a Leakey Foundation research grant in the spring of 2014. He and his team were published in this month’s issue of Nature Communications, and he has been kind enough to provide us a brief summary of the article.
Compared to our great ape relatives, humans possess a
Grantee Spotlight: Michael Granatosky
Michael Granatosky, PhD candidate from Duke University, was awarded a Leakey Foundation research grant in our most recent granting cycle for his project entitled “Gait mechanics of inverted walking: Implications for evolution of suspensory behavior.”
Michael Granatosky at the Duke Lemur Center
Specialized arm-swinging locomotion has arisen independently numerous times during the evolution of primates and yet has never appeared