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.