Alan Walker (anatomist)

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Alan Cyril Walker (born August 23, 1938 in Leicester ; † November 20, 2017 ) was a British anatomist and paleoanthropologist and since 2002 Evan Pugh Professor of Anthropology and Biology at Pennsylvania State University , USA .

Research topics

Alan Walker studied until 1962 at the University of Cambridge , among others, geology and zoology . As a doctoral thesis, he then wanted to do a study on fossil fish, but could not agree on any topic with the curator responsible at the Natural History Museum ( London ). The anthropologist Kenneth Page Oakley , an expert in the chemical dating of fossils, then recommended him to work on the lemur collection of the museum and suggested John Napier as supervisor , who explored the connection between modes of locomotion and typical anatomical features in the course of tribal history who explored primates . In Napier's group, Walker obtained a doctorate in anatomy and paleontology at the University of London in 1967 with a dissertation on the locomotion of extinct lemurs. For this he worked first at the British Museum , from 1965 for the purpose of excavations in connection with his research on lemurs at Makerere University in Uganda and then at the University of Nairobi in Kenya . In Nairobi he prepared and described for Richard Leakey a . a. various newly discovered fossils of Homo habilis . In 1974 Walker moved to Harvard University , in 1978 to Johns Hopkins University and finally in 1995 to Pennsylvania State University .

In 1985, Walker discovered a skull known as " Black Skull ", which is now assigned to Paranthropus aethiopicus , and was co-author of the first description of the " Nariokotome boy ", an extraordinarily well-preserved specimen of Homo erectus . He was also considered an expert on the fossil primate genus Proconsul and was the author of the first description of Proconsul heseloni and Kamoyapithecus .

In 1988 he was a MacArthur Fellow . He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 1996), the National Academy of Sciences (since 2003) and the Royal Society (since 1999).

Private

Alan Walker had been married to anthropologist Pat Shipman since 1976 and had a son. He died on November 20, 2017 at the age of 79.

Fonts (selection)

Technical publications

  • Locomotor adaptations in living and fossil Madagascan Lemurs . Dissertation, University of London, London 1967.
  • Dietary hypotheses and human evolution. In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B. Volume 292, No. 1, 1981, pp. 57-64, abstract .
  • with Michael R. Zimmerman and Richard Leakey : A possible case of hypervitaminosis A in Homo erectus. In: Nature. Volume 296, 1982, pp. 248-250, doi: 10.1038 / 296248a0

Books

  • with Pat Shipman: The Wisdom of the Bones. In Search of Human Origins. Knopf, New York 1996, ISBN 978-0-679426-24-0 .
    • Turkana boy. In search of the first person. Galila Verlag, Etsdorf am Kamp 2011, ISBN 978-3-902533-77-7 (revised German edition of The Wisdom of thr Bones ).
  • with Pat Shipman: The Ape in the Tree. An Intellectual and Natural History of Proconsul. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 2005, ISBN 0-674-01675-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alan Walker: Turkana Boy. In Search of the First Man, pp. 47–50
  2. ^ Alan Walker et al .: 2.5-Myr Australopithecus boisei from west of Lake Turkana, Kenya. In: Nature . Volume 322, 1986, pp. 517-522, doi: 10.1038 / 322517a0
  3. ^ Alan Walker et al .: A new species of Proconsul from the early miocene of Rusinga / Mfangano Islands, Kenya. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 25, No. 1, 1993, pp. 43-56, doi: 10.1006 / jhev.1993.1037
  4. ↑ Meave Leakey , Peter S. Ungar and Alan Walker: A new genus of large primate from the Late Oligocene of Lothidok, Turkana District, Kenya. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 28, No. 6, 1995, pp. 519-531, doi: 10.1006 / jhev.1995.1040 , full text
  5. ^ Penn State University: Pat Shipman
  6. ^ Penn State mourns passing of Alan Walker. Pennsylvania State University , November 22, 2017, accessed November 23, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Walker, Alan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Walker, Alan Cyril (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British paleoanthropologist and anatomist
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Leicester
DATE OF DEATH 20th November 2017