Thursday, February 20, 2025, 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM EST
Free!
The origin of humans came about in a complex world of shifting resources and evolutionary pressures. Advanced chemical techniques help us reconstruct the food sources and climate conditions that influenced early hominin populations.
Smithsonian scientist and manager of the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Laboratory Christine France will discuss the technique of stable isotope mass spectrometry and how it provides the unique information we need to understand the environments that shaped human evolution. She will use case studies to illustrate the the techniques of using carbon and nitrogen isotopes to reconstruct diet and oxygen isotopes to reconstruct climate.
Moderator: Briana Pobiner, paleoanthropologist and educator at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
This program is part of the ongoing HOT (Human Origins Today) Topic series and will be presented as a Zoom video webinar. A link will be emailed to all registrants.