– PORTFOLIO –
Likewise, in 2014, an international team of researchers, co-led
by Professor William Harcourt-Smith, another member of the
College’s Anthropology department, discovered the remains of
an ancient forest on Rusinga Island, Lake Victoria, Kenya. Within
this discovery was the fossil of a single Proconsul specimen,
providing evidence of the habitat of the first ape. Their findings,
which will help scientists understand the connection between
ancient habitats and the emergence of ape lineages (including
that of humans), were published in the February 2014 issue of
Nature Communications.
Harcourt-Smith, who also works as a research scientist at
New York’s American Museum of Natural History, is currently
researching the origins of bipedalism, or upright walking, thanks
to a grant from the National Science Foundation and the Leakey
Foundation. It was Harcourt-Smith that led the team of researchers
who analyzed the foot bones of Homo naledi, the newly discovered
human species that made global news in September 2015; thanks
to his work, it was concluded that Homo naledi could walk upright
and for long distances.
But wherever his research takes him, Harcourt-Smith notes that
Lehman College students have contributed mightily to his work.
“My students have played a very important role, collecting and
analyzing data,” he said, “that has led to successful publication of
the results.”
Cameron McNeil
Discovering the Wonders of the World
Lehman College has a proven record of working to improve the
Bronx. However, its professors and students are looking far beyond
New York and making discoveries that change the way we look at
the world.
Just three years after earning her doctorate in anthropology,
Cameron McNeil redefined the way the scientific world explained
the downfall of ancient Maya civilizations. She argued that largescale deforestation was not the cause of the collapse of the Maya
city of Copan in Honduras—as many had believed—and in 2010
published her findings. Working with two students in Honduras,
McNeil, who has a National Science Foundation grant for research,
is investigating how the ancient Maya lived during the Late Classic
and Protoclassic periods in the eastern section of the Copan
Valley. This research will uncover significant data that can be used
to analyze how humans impacted their environment—positively and
negatively—in once-thriving ancient civilizations.
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Lehman Today/Spring 2015
William Harcourt-Smith