Collaborative Research: Joint Paleontological and Archeological Investigations of Modern Human Origins

University Of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia MO

Investigators

Abstract

The origin of modern humans is one of the central issues in the anthropological sciences. This project investigates an extraordinary new fossil site yielding novel information about this critical time-period in human evolutionary history, including remains of immediate ancestors, the tools they made, and the environments in which they lived. The project brings together an international collaborative team to employ the latest methods in collecting and analyzing fossil and archaeological data. The team will strengthen scientific collaborations by training students in analytical and field methods. The results of the project will be shared publicly through school visits and science fairs. All data and results will be shared digitally with the international community, both scientific and public, allowing people from around the world access to evidence of our shared origins. Recent discoveries suggest that modern human origins are more complex than originally thought, but the limited fossil and archaeological record has obscured exactly when, where, how, and why modern humans appeared. A newly discovered site is unique in both the number of human remains recovered to date and the extraordinary data on the past environments it preserves. So far, this site has yielded complete skull and partial skeleton of an early modern human, remains of several other individuals, and a large number of tools. The site also preserves an abundance of fossils of animals that lived alongside these early humans, providing key data on their environment and ecology. This site is geologically correlated with other famous hominin sites permitting an extraordinary opportunity to compare early modern human behavior across different environments of the same past ecosystem during the same geological time-period. The investigators plan on several field seasons to collect and analyze human and other fossils, gather and study the abundant tools, and document the geology of the site. Some fossils will be reconstructed digitally, and the resulting 3D models will be shared publicly along with data on archaeological and animal remains. After fieldwork is complete, an international team of investigators will be brought together to analyze the anatomical, environmental, geological, and archaeological data to provide integrated analyses and further advance knowledge about the origins of modern humans. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.