John Francis Thackeray

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John Francis Thackeray gives the Koenigswald Lecture 2016 in the Senckenberg Natural History Museum

John Francis Thackeray (born November 21, 1952 in Pretoria , South Africa ) is a South African paleoanthropologist and professor at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg . There he heads the Evolutionary Studies Institute (Institute for Evolutionary Research). In professional circles, he became internationally known because of many years of excavations in the Cradle of Humankind , a World Heritage Site of UNESCO . There he mainly explored the sites of the so-called nutcracker man , Paranthropus boisei , in Kromdraai and Swartkrans .

Life

J. Francis Thackeray (as his name is usually used in theses) initially studied zoology ( Bachelor degree 1974) and archeology (Bachelor degree 1975) in South Africa at the University of Cape Town . In 1977 he finished his studies in Cape Town with a master's degree (M.Sc.) in the field of environmental research . He then moved to the United States at the Yale University , where he in 1979 another master's degrees and 1984 Ph.D. Degree in anthropology . His doctoral thesis on fossil plants from the Young Pleistocene was entitled: Man, animals and extinctions: the analysis of Holocene faunal remains from Wonderwerk Cave , South Africa.

After his return to South Africa, he worked as a researcher at the University of Stellenbosch (1982–1988) and then until 1990 at the University of Cape Town. From 1990 Thackeray headed the paleontology department at the Transvaal Museum (today: Ditsong National Museum of Natural History ), most recently (until 2009) he was its director. From 2009 until the department was reorganized in 2013, he was professor at the Institute for Human Evolution at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg. Since the merger with the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research , he has held the Phillip Tobias Chair of Paleoanthropology at the Institute for Evolutionary Research at Witwatersrand University.

Due to his collaboration with French colleagues within the framework of the Human Origins and Past Environments program (HOPE), which he directed, Thackeray was appointed Chevalier (knight) of the French Ordre national du Mérite in 1998 .

Research topics

In addition to paleoanthropological excavations, Thackeray is particularly interested in theoretical anatomical problems that currently arise in the field of paleoanthropology from the lack of fixed (statistical) criteria in the definition of pre-human species (the australopithecines ) and early-human species ( e.g. Homo ergaster / Homo erectus / Homo heidelbergensis ). “In doing so, he developed fundamentally new approaches to the analysis and evaluation of morphological criteria in the evolutionary history of mankind.” His “ statistical species concept ” is based on the pairwise comparison of as many quantifiable anatomical features as possible from as many skulls of the same species as possible. A mean value can then be used for each feature and a dispersion can be calculated. These data can be related to similarly collected data of a second species and thus the morphological proximity or distance of the two species can be named. His calculations showed u. a. that Australopithecus africanus and Homo erectus show only minor morphological differences and can therefore be interpreted in terms of Chronospecies . His approach also influenced the recognition of Australopithecus sediba, which was named in 2010, as an independent species.

Dedication name

In 2019, the Italian paleontologist Marco Pavia named the fossil ibis species Geronticus thackerayi in honor of John Francis Thackeray.

See also

Fonts (selection)

  • Man, animals and extinctions: the analysis of Holocene faunal remains from Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa. Dissertation, Yale University, Ann Arbor 1984 (University Microfilms International).
  • Probabilities of conspecificity. In: Nature . Volume 390, 1997, pp. 30-31, doi: 10.1038 / 36240
  • with various co-authors: Probabilities of conspecificity: application of a morphometric technique to modern taxa and fossil specimens attributed to Australopithecus and Homo. In: South African Journal of Science. Volume 93, 1997, pp. 195–196, full text (PDF)
  • Approximation of a biological species constant? In: South African Journal of Science. Volume 103, No. 11-12, 2007, p. 489, full text
  • Homo sapiens helmei from Florisbad, South Africa. In: The Digging Stick. Volume 27, No. 3, 2010, pp. 13-14, full text (PDF)
  • with: Zachary Cofran: One or two species? A morphometric comparison between robust australopithecines from Kromdraai and Swartkrans. In: South African Journal of Science. Volume 106, No. 1/2, 2010, Art. # 15, 4 pages, doi: 10.4102 / sajs.v106i1 / 2.15
  • with K. Houghton: Morphometric comparisons between crania of Late Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Border Cave (BC 1), Tuinplaas (TP 1) and modern southern African populations. In: Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa. Volume 66, No. 3, 2011, doi: 10.1080 / 0035919X.2011.626808
  • with Edward Odes: Morphometric analysis of Early Pleistocene African hominin crania in the context of a statistical (probabilistic) definition of a species. In: Antiquity. Volume 87, 2013, full text
  • Man is difficult to grasp. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 274, November 23, 2016, p. N2

literature

Web links

Commons : John Francis Thackeray  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Francis Thackeray, paleontologist. On: prabook.com , accessed September 6, 2016
  2. ^ 15. Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald Lecture. In: Senckenberg. Nature - Research - Museum. Volume 146, No. 9/10, 2016, p. 296.
  3. ↑ Ulf von Rauchhaupt : About the decay of species . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. No. 46, November 20, 2016, p. 65, full text
  4. ^ John Francis Thackeray: Comparisons between Australopithecus sediba (MH1) and other hominin taxa, in the context of probabilities of conspecificity. In: South African Journal of Science. Volume 106, No. 7/8, 2010, Art. # 348, 2 pages, doi: 10.4102 / sajs.v106i7 / 8.348 , full text (PDF) ( Memento from September 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Marco Pavia: Geronticus thackerayi, sp. nov. (Aves, Threskiornithidae), a new ibis from the hominin-bearing locality of Kromdraai (Cradle of Humankind, Gauteng, South Africa). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology e1647433, 2019 doi : 10.1080 / 02724634.2019.1647433
personal data
SURNAME Thackeray, John Francis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African paleoanthropologist and professor
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Pretoria , South Africa