HOT Topic: What Do Molecules in Mud Tell Us About the Environments of Our Early Hominin Ancestors?

Humans have old, deep roots in Africa, where our earliest ancestors evolved some 7 million years ago. What role, if any, did climate and environment play in shaping human evolution, or how we got here?
In this HOT (Human Origins Today) Topic session, Kevin Uno, an Associate Research Professor at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, explains how we know what past climate and environments were like in Africa using geochemical fingerprints left in the rock and fossil record.
Moderator: Briana Pobiner, paleoanthropologist and educator at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
This Zoom webinar aired April 21, 2022, as part of the ongoing HOT (Human Origins Today) Topic Series.
Learn more about the HOT Topic series and get info about upcoming webinars on the museum's Events for Adults page: naturalhistory...
Human Origins website: humanorigins.s...
Human Origins events: humanorigins.s...