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Profs & Pints DC: The Search for Human Origins
Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Search for Human Origins,” on the quest for fossil remains of a missing link, with Noel Boaz, paleoanthropologist, founder of International Institute for Human Evolutionary Research, and author of books such as Quarry, Closing in on the Missing Link.
Profs and Pints is teaming up with the Washington D.C. chapter of the Explorers Club to offer a scholarly adventure: An evening with Noel Boaz, a scholar at the front lines of the search for fossil remains of the enigmatic and controversial first hominin, Sahelanthropus tchadensis.
Dr Boaz will begin by introducing his audience to anthropogeny, a multidisciplinary field that researches the origins of human species by studying not just the fossil remains of hominins themselves but also their ancient environments. Along with studying the genetic make-up of early hominins, it seeks to learn more about what plants and animals lived alongside them, what they ate, how caused their deaths, and how they became buried.
From there we’ll look at the quest to learn more about Sahelanthropus tchadensis, a species that dates to 6 and 7 million years ago, twice as far back as a better-known hominin ancestor, the eastern African species Australopithecus afarensis (or “Lucy.”) Dr. Boaz will discuss an upcoming expedition to the Libyan Sahara to look for evidence of Sahelanthropus tchadensis and the questions such researchers are trying to solve, related to the ecological drivers of human evolution and the evolution of the genus Homo in Africa and beyond.
Finally, we’ll look at what the study of such early ancestors and our primordial adaptations tells us about ourselves and how we fit—or don’t fit—into the modern environments which we have constructed for ourselves.
Dr. Boaz will have available for sale signed copies of his books, which along with Quarry include Eco Homo: How the Human Being Emerged from the Cataclysmic History of the Earth and Dragon Bone Hill: An Ice-Age Saga of Homo erectus. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: A model of an adult male Sahelanthropus tchadensis on display at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. (Photo by Tim Evanson / Creative Commons.)
Event Links
Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/3008138-0
