Lincoln Memorial University professor to present ‘Hello, Homo naledi’

Zach Throckmorton, an assistant professor of anatomy at Lincoln Memorial University, will present “Hello, Homo naledi” at 3:30 p.m., Monday, Oct. 5, in McEniry Building, Room 125.

Homo naledi remains were discovered in the Rising Star Cave outside Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2013; they were described and analyzed in 2014 and 2015 and published for the world to read about recently. An extinct species of hominin, Homo naledi has been assigned provisionally to the genus Homo based upon the research published by 47 co-authors proposing the bones represent a new species.

Throckmorton was among the international scientists who studied Homo naledi specimens found in the barely accessible South African cave, located in an area known as the “Cradle of Humankind.” The researcher is an expert on the evolution of the human foot and ankle.

According to Throckmorton, the rapid recovery, description, initial analyses and public dissemination of the most recently uncovered member of the genus Homo was facilitated by crowdsourcing and open access. “Homo naledi presents a fascinating mixture of ancestral and derived anatomical features. And it is likely that Homo naledi deliberately disposed of its conspecifics deep inside the Rising Star Cave. In this talk, I will describe how we are changing the paleoanthropological process itself and discuss what we think we know about these intriguing hominins.”

The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and the Department of Anthropology are sponsoring this free, public lecture.