I am a paleoanthropologist interested in the ecology of ancient hominins. My main research focus involves studying how the formation of the fossil record biases paleoecological patterns. I use quantitative methods to study these biases and to account for them when making paleoecological inferences.

Interests: paleoanthropology, human evolution, paleoecology, macroecology, macroevolution, taphonomy, mammals, Plio-Pleistocene, eastern Africa, quantitative methods.

Current projects:

(1) Understanding how time-averaging alters the ecological information contained within fossil mammal assemblages. This is done in collaboration with Dr. Kay Behrensmeyer (Smithsonian) by analyzing her 50-year mammal skeletal dataset from Amboseli National Park, Kenya.

(2) Documenting large mammal diversity patterns through time and across space in the Omo-Turkana Basin, eastern Africa.

(3) Because the incompleteness of the fossil record ensures the spatial and temporal distribution of hominin species is underestimated, I use quantitative models to infer their "true" spatiotemporal distribution.

Lab culture and norms

• To get an idea of the culture and norms of my lab, please click this link.
• To see my expectations of my students and their expectations of me (i.e., our mentor-mentee compact), please click this link.

ANTH 674: Research Design & Analysis in Anthropology

This is my graduate-level data analysis class. Click the following links for the syllabus, lecture slides, and instructions for accessing the interactive R tutorials. The R tutorials are a great way to learn R and different statistical methods using R.