Storer Lectureship feat. Philip Gunz, Max Planck Institute | May 17, 2023

The Tracy and Ruth Storer Lectureship in the Life Sciences Presents "Neanderthals Agree You Have a Weird Head: Fossil Traces of Brain Evolution (Public Lecture)"

About the series: The Tracy and Ruth Storer Lectureship in the Life Sciences was established in 1960, to invite distinguished biological scientists to campus to present lectures and meet with faculty members and graduate students in their field of interest. Past Storer Lectures have included Nobel laureates, members of the National Academy of Science and acclaimed authors in medicine and the life sciences.

Philipp Gunz is a biological anthropologist with a primary research interest in palaeoanthropology. He studies the evolution of developmental patterns with the aim of understanding what makes us human by comparing our own species with our closest living and fossil relatives. As fossils are usually found broken into many pieces, and only partially complete, a central topic of his work is the virtual reconstruction of fossils using computed tomographic scans. In his work, he explores different aspects of ontogenetic and phylogenetic shape changes — in particular the evolution and development of the brain and the imprint it leaves in the bony braincase through an interdisciplinary approach that brings together analysis of fossil skulls, ancient genomes, brain imaging and gene expression.