Biographies

Prof. Lee R Berger

Lead author on Australopithecus sediba: A New Species of Homo-like Australopith from South Africa

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Prof. Lee R Berger is the Reader in Human Evolution and the Public Understanding of Science in the Institute for Human Evolution, School of Geosciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He discovered the site of Malapa in 2008 and is the discoverer of the female skeleton MH-2. He is the Director and Principle Investigator of the Project.

Berger, an award-winning researcher, author and speaker is the recipient of the Friedel Sellschop Award for Young Researchers and the National Geographic Society?s first Prize for Research and Exploration. He has appeared in numerous television documentaries and is a regular commentator on evolution and palaeontology.
He graduated from Georgia Southern University in 1989 and received his PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1994.Lee is an Eagle Scout, and Boy Scout Honor Medal winner. He is an avid Diver and PADI Divemaster. Lee is married to Jacqueline and they have two children ? Megan and Matthew.

Tel: 27 11 717 6604
Mobile: 27 71 864 0860
Email:Lee.Berger@wits.ac.za / profleeberger@yahoo.com
Web:www.wits.ac.za

Prof. Paul HGM Dirks

Lead author on Geological Setting and Age of Australopithecus sediba from Southern Africa

Head of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia and former Head of the Wits School of Geosciences (2005 ? 2009)

Prof. Paul Dirks is a structural geologist with an interest in geodynamics and the tectonic history of cratonic terrains and adjacent mobile belts, including mineralisation patterns and neotectonics.

Prof. Dirks holds an MSc in Geology from the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, and a PhD in Geology from the University of Melbourne. While at Wits, Prof. Dirks was closely involved with palaeo-anthropology, and he was part of the management team that helped establish the Institute for Human Evolution, on which he served as a board member from 2005 to 2009. In 2004, Prof. Dirks co-founded the Afric rray Programme, an international, multidisciplinary research and training effort to investigate the structure and tectonics of the African plate, from the Earth?s surface to the core-mantle boundary. By linking mantle structure to the neotectonics of the African land surface, Prof. Dirks became involved in the structure of the Transv l sequence rocks in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. Together with Prof. Lee Berger, Prof. Dirks recognised the need for a multi-disciplinary approach to finding new fossil sites in the Cradle, and in early 2008 they devised a plan to systematically investigate cave occurrences and to link them to active tectonic processes and structure in an attempt to better understand, and possibly predict, cave, and fossil distribution patterns. This mapping and data compilation project led to the discovery of the Malapa site in August 2008. Once discovered, Prof. Dirks took responsibility for leading the geological team in providing context to the spectacular new fossil finds.

Prof. Dirks is a Fellow of the Geological Society of South Africa, and past Chairman of the Geological Society Zimbabwe. He is the assistant editor of the South African Journal of Geology, and past editor of Gondwana Research. Prof. Dirks has extensive experience as a consultant to the mining and minerals industry focussing on geological mapping, open pit stability and gold and base metal exploration. He is the past director of SRK Zimbabwe, and has helped develop mineral databases for exploration and target generation in Africa focussing on gold. Prof. Dirks has authored and co-authored over 70 peer reviewed papers, 58 professional reports and over 120 abstracts, CDs, mineral databases and excursion guides.

Tel: 61 74781 5047
Mobile: 61 429 566120
Email:paul.dirks@jcu.edu.au
Website:www.jcu.edu.au

Dr Darryl J. de Ruiter

Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA

Dr Darryl de Ruiter is a paleoanthropologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Originally from Canada, Dr de Ruiter received his Masters degree in Anthropology at the University of Manitoba in 1995. The following year he moved to South Africa to continue his studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, receiving his PhD from the Department of Anatomical Sciences in 2001. He was employed as a Research Officer in the Bernard Price Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand from 2001 until 2003, when he moved to his current position in Texas. In 2009 he was promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, and was selected as a ?Ray A. Rothrock? Fellow in the College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M. Dr de Ruiter was also recently appointed an Honorary Reader in the newly established Institute for Human Evolution of the University of the Witwatersrand, and he maintains close collaborative ties with his friends and colleagues in South Africa.

Dr de Ruiter has excavated at nearly every hominin fossil cave in South Africa, and he currently directs two fossil exploration projects in the Free State. He is a leading craniodental specialist, responsible for the analysis of the cranium, jaws, and teeth of the hominins from the Malapa site. In addition to his research into the anatomy of the hominins, Dr de Ruiter has also explored the ecology of both the hominins and the animal paleocommunities that accompany them. Employing faunal and isotopic analyses, Dr de Ruiter and his colleagues have demonstrated that the robust australopiths of South Africa were dietary and habitat generalists, contrary to the prevailing belief that they were highly specialised animals. He has published more than 50 scientific papers and volumes, in such journals as Science, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology and the Journal of Human Evolution.

Dr Steven E Churchill

Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, Durham, USA

Dr Steven Churchill is an Associate Professor and past chair of the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University (United States). He received a BS from Virginia Tech and an MA and PhD from the University of New Mexico before joining the faculty at Duke in 1995.

Dr Churchill is a human palaeontologist studying morphological and behavioural adaptation in Middle and Late Pleistocene Homo (such as Homo heidelbergensis, Neanderthals and early modern humans). His research combines comparative functional morphological and biomechanical studies, experimental approaches and field work in southern Africa and southern Europe to best apprehend the adaptive shifts that occurred in the later stages of human evolution.

Dr Churchill?s research has primarily focused on four inter-related areas: 1) The ecology, energetics and adaptive strategies of premodern members of the genus Homo (especially the Neandertals [Homo neanderthalensis] of Europe and western Asia and Middle Pleistocene archaic humans of Africa [variously attributed to H. heidelbergensis, H. rhodesiensis or H. helmei]) and early members of our own species [H. sapiens] in Africa, the Near East and Europe; 2) The evolution of human subsistence strategies across the Middle and Late Pleistocene, with an emphasis on the nature of the hunting methods employed by various groups; and 3) The evolution of subsistence technology, especially the origins of true long-range projectile weaponry, and; 4) The community ecology of humans and large-bodied carnivores in Pleistocene Europe and Africa.

In addition to this basic research, Dr Churchill has been conducting fieldwork in southern Africa, in collaboration with Dr Lee Berger and others, since 1995.This fieldwork has as its goal the improvement of our understanding of the morphology and behaviour of Middle Stone Age-associated early modern humans and their immediate ancestors (African Middle Pleistocene archaic humans).

Dr Churchill holds a secondary appointment as an Honorary Reader in the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand. He was formerly an associate of the Palaeoanthropology Unit for Research and Exploration in the Bernard Price Institute of Palaeontology at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Dr Churchill is responsible for leading the team of scholars working on the analysis of the postcranial remains of fossils from the Malapa site.

Dr Peter Schmid

Anthropological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich

Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Dr Kristian J Carlson

Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Dr Kristian Carlson is a Senior Researcher in the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and has received a C2 researcher rating by the National Research Foundation of South Africa.

Dr Carlson received his undergraduate BS degrees in Anthropology and Anthropology-Zoology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1994. He completed graduate degrees in Anthropology from Indiana University, Bloomington, receiving an MA in 1998, and a PhD in 2002. From 2002 ? 2005, he undertook postdoctoral research in the Department of Anatomical Sciences, Stony Brook University. He also completed postdoctoral work in the Anthropologisches Institut und Museum, Universit?Z?h, Switzerland from 2005 ? 2006. From 2006 until 2009, he was an Assistant Professor of Anatomy in the Department of Anatomy, New York College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Dr Carlson?s research focuses on understanding how limbs, acting as structures, are stressed during locomotor modes, and understanding the functional signals that locomotor activities leave in limb anatomy. Identifying changes in limb structure during hominin evolution offers an opportunity to resolve whether the shift towards terrestrial bipedalism happened relatively quickly or more gradually, and whether fore- and hind limbs reveal similar or different functional histories.

In order to achieve his research goals, Dr Carlson studies functional morphology in mice and in our closest living ancestors, the African apes. He particularly emphasises habituated chimpanzees in his research programme, for these unique populations provide unrivalled research opportunities to study chimpanzee form and function in the context of documented habitat conditions, life history, and behavioural repertoires, often to the level of the individuals.

Dr Carlson has participated in excavations and recovery of specimens at the Malapa site. He is also a team member participating in the description and interpretation of hominin postcranial remains. He is responsible for directing all aspects of the hominin research specifically related to visualisation and virtual-based analyses, including the use of 3D data acquisition modalities such as CT scanning and synchrotron.

Dr Carlson is widely published in a number of prestigious publications including the International Journal of Primatology, the Journal of Human Evolution, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology and the Journal of Zoology.

Dr Job M Kibii

Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Dr Job Kibii, originally from Kenya, is the first indigenous African to obtain a PhD in Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, which he was awarded in 2005.

He obtained his Honours degree in Archaeology and Sociology from the University of Nairobi in 1998. He came to South Africa in 1999 and enrolled for a Masters degree at the Department of Archaeology, at Wits, which was awarded in 2001. In 2006, Kibii was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the University of Witwatersrand.

Dr Kibii is a product of Wits University having graduated completed his Masters, PhD and postdoctoral studies at this institution. In 2009, he was appointed as a researcher in the Institute for Human Evolution.

On 15 August 2008, Dr Kibii accompanied Prof. Lee Berger and his son Matthew the day on which the first hominid discovery at the site was made. Later, Berger and Kibii, applied for a joint permit to excavate the site. Since then, Kibii has been directing and supervising the day to day running and progress of the excavation, including supervision of the 2009 and 2010 Swiss Fieldschools at the site.

Dr Kibii is also actively involved in the analysing of faunal remains recovered from the site including the analysis of hominid postcranial material.

In 2003, Dr Kibii discovered an Australopithecine ilium that for the first time enabled a full reconstruction of the Australopithecine pelvis (Kibii and Clarke 2003). This was featured in both the print and electronic media.

Dr Kibii also discovered, in the course of his doctoral studies, the first and only Australopithecine scaphoid, which he is currently analysing for publication.

Dr Christine Steininger

Prof. Jan D Kramers

School of Geosciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Institute of Geological Sciences, University of Berne, Baltzerstrasse, Switzerland

Department of Geology, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park

Dr Jan Dirk Kramers holds a PhD in economic geology from the University of Berne and speaks Dutch, English, German, French, Italian, and Afrik ns.

Dr Kramers has been an honorary professor of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg since June 2008. Currently also a part-time Professor of Geochemistry at the University of Johannesburg as of September 2009, Dr Kramers? association with Wits dates back to 1973, when he was a research fellow at the Bernard Price Institute. He has worked in Geology in Switzerland at the University of Berne, in Zimbabwe at the University of Zimbabwe and in the United Kingdom at the University of Leeds.

Dr Kramers has been involved in dating the flowstone layer at the Malapa site with uranium-lead. For the past two years, Dr Kramers has been involved in exploring and analysing the geological record of palaeoclimatic changes and the forcings, triggers and feedback mechanisms involved in them. Further, he explores and champions the creative and constructive use of isotope geochemical methods in applied environmental research. His research cooperation has included the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Johannesburg, the University of Zimbabwe, the Russian Academy, Oxford University, the University of Rennes (France), the University of Heidelberg (Germany), the School of Mines of Leoben (Austria), the University of Oregon (USA), the University of Queensland (Australia) and the Laurentian University (Sudbury, Canada).

Dr Robyn Pickering

School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia

Originally from Johannesburg, South Africa, Dr Robyn Pickering completed a PhD at the University of Bern in Switzerland in 2009 and currently holds a three-year a Post-Doctoral fellowship at the University of Melbourne. She holds three degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. While she has been out of South Africa for the last five years, she maintains strong links with her colleagues at Wits, which has resulted in her producing numerous publications.

Together with Prof. Jan Kramers, Dr Pickering dated the speleothem or flowstone layer, which underlies the fossil hominins using Uranium-Lead dating. This layer is 2.026 0.021 million years old, meaning that the fossils must be younger than this. Until recently it was not possible to directly date the South African cave deposits, so having this direct age for a layer in such close proximity to the fossils is a breakthrough. Knowing how old the fossils are is critical in assessing where they fit into our own family tree and how they relate to other fossil taxa. The Uranium-Lead dating result is made all the more significant as analyses were carried out independently in Switzerland at the University of Bern and in Australia at the University of Melbourne, with no communication between the scientists to ensure a ?blind test?. The results from the two laboratories produced ages within error of each other, i.e. the same age.

Dr Pickering?s research involves the use of radiogenic and stable isotope geochemistry to investigate the age and palaeo-environmental significance of carbonate rocks, in particular cave deposits (speleothems). She works predominantly on caves containing early human fossil remains employing the U-Pb and U-Th radiometric dating methods to provide robust chronologies of human evolution. These studies are highly interdisciplinary and bring state-of-the-art technological developments to fields as diverse as palaeoanthropology and climate change. Current projects encompass the South African early hominin caves near Johannesburg and the human occupation sites of Pinnacle Points on the southern South African coast.

Dr Pickering conducted PhD research which involved the first systematic direct dating of the South African hominin bearing cave sites using Uranium-Lead dating. She received her PhD with the highest possible grade in Switzerland. She was an invited participant on a Stony Brook Human Evolution Workshop (August 2009, Turkana Basin Institute, Kenya) celebrating the 40th and 50th anniversary of the discovery of the Zinj skull and focusing on the Paranthropus-bearing hominin sites.

Dr Daniel L Farber

Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, USA

Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

Dr Daniel L Farber is a geophysicist and a member of Geo-CAMS at the Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He obtained a PhD in Geophysics from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1994, an MS in Geology from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles and a BS from California State University, Northridge.

Dr Farber?s research is centred on understanding the processes of mountain building and landscape evolution using isotopic techniques to determine the age of landscapes and field measurements to quantify tectonic deformation. Dr Farber?s recent work has been focused in a number of areas: technique development for applications of in situ produced cosmogenic radionuclides; the timing and distribution of deformation and uplift in the Peruvian Andes; and the timing and nature of tropical glaciation.

Dr Farber was invited to work on a project in South Africa envisaged by Dr Geoff King together with Dr Lee Berger and Dr Paul Dirks to investigate the nature of landscape change in the Cradle of Humankind. The intent of this work is to quantify the nature of post Miocene landscape change and to use this information to understand the effects of landscape morphology and change on early homnin evolution. Shortly after initiating the project, Dr Berger?s find of the Malapa site focused the teams efforts on the short term research goal of understanding the post fossil erosional changes above and surrounding the Malapa cave site.

Dr Farber has won various honours including an award for Outstanding Senior Thesis, Dept. Geology, California State University, Northridge; the ron C. Waters Award for Outstanding Dissertation Proposal, Earth Sciences Dept., University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Science and Technology Award, 2004. He is widely published.

Dr Anne-Sophie M?aux

School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Dr Anne-Sophie M?aux has a PhD in Geophysics from the Institut de Physique Du Globe, Paris, France, which she obtained in 2002. From 2002 to 2005, she was a postdoctoral research associate at LLNL, in the USA, and from 2005 ? 2006, she held the position of Marie Curie Fellow of CRONUS-Eu at the University of Edinburgh. Since 2007, she has been a lecturer in Quaternary Geochronology at the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University, in the United Kingdom.

In 2004, Dr M?aux was named a Young Fellow of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics for ?outstanding contributions to the understanding of the tectonics of Asia and the development of morphochronology?.

Dr M?aux?s research interests include Active Tectonics and quantitative Tectonic Geomorphology, Cosmogenic nuclides and Morphochronology and landscape evolution. She is extensively published.

Dr M?aux has taken part in the evaluation of the Landscape evolution surrounding the Malapa cave through cosmogenic radionuclide analysis. In September 2008, Dr M?aux visited the new hominin site with Dr Farber, Dr King and Prof. Lee Berger. Together, they sampled several nearby sites for cosmogenic analysis. In particular, they sampled the African Erosion Surface to quantify the erosion rate of the ancient relic plateau of the region and the bedrock channel of the Grootvleispruit River to derive its incision rate. The cosmogenic data indicate that the Malapa cave was tens of meters deep when the Hominin fossils were deposited.

Dr Andy I. R. Herries

Head of UNSW Archaeomagnetism Laboratory, School of Medical Sciences, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Sydney, Australia

Geomagnetism Laboratory, Oliver Lodge, Department of Earth and Ocean Science, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

ARC Australian Research Fellow, Integrative Palaeoecology and Anthropology Studies Group (iPAST), School of Medical Sciences

Dr Andy Herries has worked with researchers from the University of the Witwatersrand since 1997. He worked for many years (1999-2002) on the Makapansgat Field School run jointly by Arizona State University and Wits Anatomical Sciences. He additionally worked with Phd students from Anatomical Sciences at the site of Gondolin and currently the site of Hoogland. He also worked with Lee Berger at the site of Gladysvale and the late Tim Partridge at the site of Sterkfontein. He has also worked intermittently with Lyn Wadley in the Department of Archaeology at the Middle Stone Age sites of Sibudu and Rose Cottage Caves since 2001.

Dr Herries is a geochronologist, geoarchaeologist and field archaeologist who has worked on resolving the chronology of the South African hominin sites for the last 14 years and has excavated archaeological sites throughout the world for the last 19 years. He undertook his BSc, MSc and PhD in Archaeological Science and Geomagnetism at the University of Liverpool in the UK where he still holds an honorary research position and helps supervise students. He completed his post-doctoral studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia, Bulgaria and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia where he now holds his current research fellowship. He helps run the UNSW Archaeology teaching programme and is head of the UNSW Archaeomagnetics Laboratory.

Dr Herries? work has centred on creating a chronology for the South African hominin sites independent of correlations with eastern Africa by combining palaeomagnetic analysis with other geochronological methods. Currently he runs excavations and field projects in China and South Africa and is involved in further projects in Bulgaria, Australia, Kenya and Ethiopia. In South Africa his work has ranged from: studying Pliocene fossil sites at Langeb nweg; early australopithecine bearing sites near Johannesburg and at Makapansgat; middle Pleistocene fossils sites such as Elandsfontein and Cornelia; Middle Stone Age sites on the southern Cape coast; and Later Stone Age of the Gh p Plateau. In China and Australia he is currently undertaking work to look at the earliest occupation of those regions by modern humans and dating the early fossil sites. Dr Herries has also spent the last 12 years developing archaeomagnetic methods for identifying fire use by humans and reconstructing palaeoenvironments from archaeological cave sites. Recently this has led to work identifying the heat treatment of stone tools using palaeomagnetism in the southern Cape. Dr Herries also conducts sampling for other researchers in extreme locations such as remote caves where rope access is required. This has ranged from collecting speleothems in Cambodia to help understand climate change during the fall of Angkor Watt to running excavations in sea caves in the southern Cape where rock climbing is needed to gain access to the deposits.

Dr Herries is undertaking palaeomagnetic analysis at the Malapa site. Currently this centres on assessing the age of the hominin specimens and strata as well as identifying the age and pattern of small geomagnetic field oscillations preserved within the speleothems deposits.

Dr Herries has helped produce some of the first refined age estimates for the southern African hominin and fossil bearing sites such as the Makapansgat Limeworks, Buffalo Cave, Sterkfontein, Gondolin, Gladysvale, Hoogland and Cornelia. This has included dating the famous Mrs Ples australopithecine fossil from Sterkfontein to around 2.2-2.0 Ma. In 2007 he was an author on a paper in the journal Nature describing the oldest evidence for ochre utilisation and seafood consumption by early modern humans 164,000 years ago in South Africa. In 2009 he was an author on a paper in the journal Science that identified the oldest evidence for the heat treatment of silcrete to make stone tools in the Middle Stone Age of South Africa at 71, 000 years.

Dr Geoffrey C. P. King

Equipe de Tectonique, Institut de Physique du Globe, Paris, France

Department of Archaeology, the University of York, United Kingdom

Dr Geoffrey King was born in Uganda and educated in Scotland and England. Following a degree in Applied Physics at Durham, he gained a PhD in Geophysics at Cambridge where he stayed for many years.

His early research concerned the development of strain and tilt instruments, but later extended to seismology. He led post-earthquake interventions to several major earthquakes around the Mediterranean. The studies included fault mapping and measuring and dating uplift associated with previous earthquake cycles together with aftershock studies and studies of the main event using waveform modelling of teleseismic data. For five years he then worked for the US Geological Survey in Denver and Menlo Park for part of which time he was director of the civilian seismic network concerned with establishing hazard at the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Parallel with these studies he developed techniques for modelling deformation resulting from repeating earthquakes; a quantitative method for studying the evolution of morphology. This also led to collaboration with archaeologists to understand the role of landforms in hominin evolution. A 2006 paper on the topic in the archaeological journal Antiquity received their prestigious prize for 2006.

The study of stress interactions between earthquakes has also been an important area of research with a 1994 paper being quoted by ISI Essential Science Indicators as the most highly quoted paper in earthquake studies over the last 10 years. Field areas include China, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Ethiopia, South Africa, the Levant and the USA. For more than 18 years King has worked for the Institut de Physique du Globe first in Strasbourg and then in Paris where he became director of the ?Equipe de Tectonique?. He has published more than 150 research papers in major journals, is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and appointed ?Classe exceptionelle? in the Institut de Physique du Globe.

He is an Honorary Professor at the Department of Archaeology, University of York, England and holds other awards come from the Greek Academy of Sciences and the US Geological Survey.

In 2005 a joint project known as !Khure was initiated between French and South African universities. This involved 12 sub projects concerning a wide range of Earth and Life sciences. Geoffrey King led the project on ?Tectonic geomorphology and climatic influence on Plio-Pleistocene hominin environments in southern Africa?.

Together with Wits? Professors Lee Berger and Paul Dirks it was proposed to survey the whole of the Cradle of Humankind region to produce a mappable database containing all relevant information for this critical region. This project was seen as a companion to a similar project in the Galilee region of N Israel, which has high density of Stone Age sites and must have been critical to the diffusion of hominins between Africa and Eurasia.

Dr King is widely published in a variety of notable books and journals, including the Journal of Human Evolution, Maritime Heritage, the Journal of Island & Coastal Archaeology, the Journal of Geophysical Research and Nature.

Dr Brian F Kuhn

Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Dr Brian F Kuhn?s background is in Zoology, having earned his undergraduate degrees in both Zoology (1990) and Anthropology (1991) from Washington State University. After a number of years working in the field of conservation, the culmination of which saw him working in Jordan as a Peace Corps Volunteer, he returned to University and earned a Masters degree in Palaeoecology from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. His Masters work specialized in zooarchaeology and emphasised the taphonomy of striped hyaenas (Hyaena hyaena).

Following his masters, Dr Kuhn moved to the University of Pretoria under Professor John Skinner to continue his research on hyaenid bone collecting and the possible implications towards palaeoanthropology. During this time he added spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta) and brown hyaena (Parahyaena brunnea) to his data set and subsequently earned his doctorate in 2006. Upon completion of his doctorate he became a Postdoctoral Fellow at Wits University, affiliated with both the Bernard Price Institute and the IHE for a period of two years, and today he is a researcher with the Institute for Human Evolution.

Dr Kuhn is working on the identification of the carnivore fossil material from the new hominin bearing site of Malapa. Dr Kuhn?s research covers a broad spectrum. He is also currently working on numerous other projects which include the identification of fossil hyaenids from Coopers, identification of fossil eggs from Taung, taphonomy of vultures and continued research on extant hyaena (spotted, brown and striped) paying particular attention to variation in bone collecting behaviours between and within the species?. In addition he has a new project investigating ecological and paleontological implications of leopards (Panthera pardus) and brown hyaenas.

Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand

boy.louw@wits.ac.za

0847988333

Casting technician

Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand

Bongani.nkosi@wits.ac.za

0796470475

Casting technician

Celeste Yates

Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand

Celeste.Yates@wits.ac.za

0728684621

Preparator

Roseberry Laguza

Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand

roseberry.languza@wits.ac.za

0769054800

Preparator

Meschack Kgasi

Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand

meshack.kgasi@wits.ac.za

0722776436

Preparator and
Lead excavator

Charlton Dube

Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontology, University of the Witwatersrand

charlton.dube@wits.ac.za

N/A

Preparator

Pepson

Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontology, University of the Witwatersrand

danny.mithi@wits.ac.za

0844539705

Excavator