Kevin Hatala

Eighteen million years of diverse enamel proteomes from the East African Rift - Nature The isolation of dental proteins from fossils deposited 1.5 million to 18 million years ago in the Turkana Basin in Kenya, a tropical region, demonstrate the promise of dental enamel for palaeoproteom...

Breaking the barriers! Important new paper by Daniel Green and others discovering 18 million years of proteins of East African mammals!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Enamel proteins reveal biological sex and genetic variability in southern African Paranthropus Paranthropus robustus is a morphologically well-documented Early Pleistocene hominin species from southern Africa with no genetic evidence reported so far. In this work, we describe the mass spectrome...

Hello,

Our paper on enamel proteins from Paranthropus robustus has finally been peer reviewed, please have a read here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Paranthropus robustus has been puzzling scientists since its discovery in 1938 in South Africa, where a high number of fossils have been found.

I am offering two 4-year PhD positions (fully funded) and a 57 month combined post-doc / project manager position as part of my NWO-Vici grant, which starts in September.

YouTube video by World of Paleoanthropology Unearthing the Past: The New Turkana Footprints with Dr. Kevin Hatala

Unearthing the Past: The New Turkana Footprints with Dr. Kevin Hatala
youtu.be/vX-b4L3cxW0 @kevinhatala.bsky.social

Engineering skills in the manufacture of tools by wild chimpanzees Biological sciences; Zoology; Evolutionary biology

Really happy to see this paper out, using field biomechanics we show that wild chimpanzees don't just randomly select plants materials for termite fishing tools – they use a little “folk physics” choosing materials with specific properties! Study in iScience www.cell.com/iscience/ful.... 1/5

Want to move to Spain?

Do you study craniodental evolution in human and non-human primate evolution?

Looking for postdoc position?

Interested in working with my @Tied2Teeth group here @CENIEH???

Deadline to apply: 28 March 2025

www.cenieh.es/en/about-cen...

🎊 Congratulations to the ten #AABA2025 student prize winners and honorable mentions! bioanth.org/about/studen...

The earliest human face of Western Europe - Nature A Homo aff. erectus individual dated to 1.4 million to 1.1 million years ago found at Sima del Elefante (Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain) does not display the modern-human-like aspect of Homo antecess...

Our new paper 🥲 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🥁 Congratulations to the 76 awardees of the 2025 William S. Pollitzer Student Travel Award! The Pollitzer Student Travel Awards are designed to help students defray the costs of attending the AABA meetings. bioanth.org/about/willia... #AABA2025

YouTube video by PBS Eons Could You Survive Living With Other Hominin Species?

"Could You Survive Living With Other Hominin Species?" asks PBS Eons. youtu.be/c4E6chPj-IQ?... #humanevolution

Get excited for #AABA2025 in Baltimore next week! Download the AABA 2025 app and start planning your meeting www.xcdsystem.com/mobile/index...

AABA Workshop in Baltimore: What happens to my grant proposal? Peek into the process through mock review! This workshop introduces early career scholars to the grant review process through mock review exercises with experienced panelists and representatives from Leakey and Wenner-Gren. Date and Time: Marc...

Ever wondered what happens to your grant proposal once you submit it? Join a hands-on “mock review” workshop to learn about review processes at The Leakey Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. March 12 at #AABA2025. Registration is limited so act fast! @bioanth.org bit.ly/4havY78

Strontium isotope mapping of elephant enamel supports an integrated microsampling-modeling workflow to reconstruct herbivore migrations - Communications Biology Comparisons of 87Sr/86Sr data from the tusk and molar enamel of a zoo elephant suggest that a microsampling-modeling workflow is the best practice strategy for geospatial reconstructions of seasonal m...

🚨New article🚨Our #research on #elephant🐘and #strontium #isotopes in #teeth🦷is published with
@commsbio.bsky.social
We show how Sr is recorded in teeth and how we use such records to help reconstruct migration. @kevinuno.bsky.social @kpodkovyroff.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Connecting Local Communities to Paleoanthropology in Kenya On Rusinga Island, a group is celebrating field assistants who helped find famous fossils and inspiring locals to study ancient history.

Exciting things happening on Rusinga Island!

www.sapiens.org/culture/loca...

Groundbreaking research
on Homo erectus
www.nature.com/articles/s43...

#OldupaiGorge
BED III:

Using sedimentology, geochemistry, Ar/Ar dating, biome simulations, fire history, paleobotany, fauna, and lithics, we reveal how hominins navigated extreme environments in northern Tanzania 1 Ma

Congratulations to the 2025 AABA Award Winners! This year we honor Dr. Kay Behrensmeyer, Dr. Lorena Madrigal, and Dr. Sang-Hee Lee. Thank you for your contributions to biological anthropology! #AABA2025

Important update for anyone with a manuscript in the JHE editorial pipeline. Thanks for sharing!

3D acetabular orientation vectors (normal vectors to the acetabular plane) overlayed on a human pelvis and shown in views representing the median plane, lumbosacral plane, and orthogonal comparative plane. Colors of the vectors and colors and symbols for the data points represent their taxonomic group. Within each view, all vectors are the same length. The view in the orthogonal comparative plane (top left), which approximates an anterior/ventral view, and the view in the median plane (center right) show that humans and most fossil hominins have more ventrally oriented acetabula than other groups but that groups do not differ in their acetabular orientation relative to the lumbosacral plane. The view in the lumbosacral plane (bottom left) approximates a cranial view and shows that humans have more ventrally oriented acetabula than other extant anthropoids, which have predominantly laterally facing acetabula.

I'm very excited to share a new paper out this week with co-authors Ashley Hammond and Carol Ward.

doi.org/10.1016/j.jh...

Incredible site. If you want to see the length of these trackways, and a little walk through of some of the Sauropod tracks, I've uploaded a 4k60p video to YouTube:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dyH...

📣 Students: applications for Pollitzer Student Travel Awards to attend #AABA2025 in Baltimore are due on January 6! Apply now! bioanth.org/about/willia...

Reminder: The deadline for AABA Pollitzer travel award applications is 1 week away (Jan 6). If you are a student traveling to the Annual Meeting in Baltimore, please apply!

After the amazing paper by @kevinhatala.bsky.social & colleagues on locomotor variation in early #hominins, an exciting new study led by George Brill on forms of locomotion in #foragers
'Extensive locomotor versatility across a global sample of hunter–gatherer societies'
doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

This is a really interesting study, congratulations!

📣 AABA is excited to announce two new initiatives to provide funding for our community, the AABA Community Fund and the AABA Presidents’ Fund! bioanth.org/donate/

Fußabdrücke belegen Treffen zweier Urmenschenarten Die Ahnenreihe des modernen Menschen reicht bis zu den verschiedenen Übergangstufen zwischen Menschenaffen und Menschen zurück. In Kenia wurden nun 1,5 Millionen Fußabdrücke entdeckt. Sie belegen, das...

Paranthropus Boisei (der "Nussknackermensch") trifft Homo Erectus - zwei Urmenschenarten am Ufer eines Sees in Kenia, allein das ist schon eine Super-Geschichte. Aber dass man dieses Treffen nun durch fossile Fußabdrücke nachweisen konnte, ist besonders cool. #Anthropologie

In this week's #SciencePodcast🎙️, kevinhatala.bsky.social joins Meagan Cantwell to discuss fossil footprints unearthed in the Turkana Basin of Kenya that indicate two ancient hominins crossed paths within days of each other.

🎧 Listen here: www.science.org/content/podc...

Rare footprints suggest two of our prehistoric ancestors may have met The footprints are the first clear evidence that the two hominin species shared a habitat, raising questions about whether their interactions shaped human evolution.

In the throes of conflict, this close encounter between two of our prehistoric ancestors feels extra remarkable somehow. Thanks @kevinhatala.bsky.social and Craig Feibel for talking to me about what they unearthed about this moment from 1.5 million years ago.
www.washingtonpost.com/science/2024...

Fossilized footprints reveal 2 extinct hominin species living side by side 1.5 million years ago Ancient fossil footprints are the first evidence of two different hominin species − Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei − living in the same place at the same time.

Fossilized footprints reveal 2 extinct hominin species living side by side 1.5 million years ago

Follow @jackiehmatthes.bsky.social , co-curator of our childhood rock collection, for the latest on carbon cycles and climate change!

Thank you!