The Fat of the Land: What Ancient Bones Tell Us About the Origin of the Human Diet

You are invited to join the Institute of Human Origins Research Council, with Director William Kimbel and Founding Director Donald Johanson, for a lively and engaging evening at the Metropolitan Club in New York City.

Cocktails and conversation will be followed by a compelling presentation by ASU doctoral graduate and Institute of Human Origins alumna Jessica Thompson.

When and how did our ancestors first make the evolutionary jump from a plant-eating primate to the meat-consuming creature we are today? Jessica Thompson has led a team of scientists (including her Institute of Human Origins advisor, Curtis Marean) that proposes a provocative new theory suggesting that — prior to the advent of stone tool-making — scavenging inside-bone nutrients, such as marrow fat, was the critical first step in our becoming the planet’s top predatory species. Thompson proposes a timeline for this transition that is much earlier than previously thought.

 An assistant professor at Emory University, Thompson conducts multidisciplinary research on the first deep-time cultural and paleo-environmental timeline for human evolution in east-central Africa. Her field work in Malawi is documenting human-environment interactions between 100,000 and 40,000 years ago — at a time that saw major behavioral innovation in the human lineage. In Ethiopia, she is working at the 3.5 to 3 million-year-old Hadar and Dikika sites to understand the most ancient transformations in early human diet.

Please join us as Jessica Thompson unfolds the fascinating story of the “human predatory pattern.” 

Register at the event website.