John G. Fleagle

John Gwynn Fleagle (born April 30, 1948 in Burlington , North Carolina ) is an American anatomist and paleontologist . In particular, he researches the tribal history of primates and the influence of the environment on the behavior and blueprint of primates over the past 50 million years. John Fleagle is Professor in the Anatomy Department of the School of Medicine at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook , New York .

research

John Fleagle earned his bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1971 and his master's degree in anthropology from Harvard University in 1973 . 1976 followed at Harvard, also in the subject anthropology, the Doktor -grad ( Ph.D. ). His dissertation was entitled Locomotion, Posture, and Comparative Anatomy of Malaysian Forest Primates . He has been teaching and researching in the anatomy department of Stony Brook University since 1975, initially as a lecturer and since 1984 as a professor.

The beginning of the 1970s began Fleagle using filming the effectiveness of swinging forward movements of Siamangs , a Gibbon - Art analyze. After 800 hours of observation for his dissertation in the Krau nature reserve ( Pahang , West Malaysia ), he derived conclusions from his data for the reconstruction of the movement patterns of primitive humans , who, according to his interpretation, moved slowly and quadruped on the branches in trees .

In addition, since the mid-1970s, Fleagle has dealt with the analysis of fossil bone finds, gibbon great apes from the Miocene of Africa, among others. a. with finds from the excavation site Nakap IV (Karamoja region, Eastern Uganda ). Together with Elwyn L. Simons, he published the first description of the Miocene genus Micropithecus and its type Micropithecus clarki in 1978 , based on finds from this excavation site.

In the 1980s he did research a. a. in Egypt about the anatomical peculiarities of the Aegyptopithecus from the Oligocene , which was first scientifically described in 1965 , which, like the somewhat younger species he discovered in Uganda, probably moved on four feet on branches.

From 2004 to 2007 Fleagle was director of the Turkana Basin Institute in the Turkana Basin in northern Kenya , which was then being established; in this region near Lake Turkana were u. a. Miocene primates like Turkanapithecus kalakolensis and Afropithecus turkanensis as well as - further north in Ethiopia - discovered the fossils Omo 1 and Omo 2 , which are among the earliest records of anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) .

His research on fossil primates was incorporated into the third edition of the standard work Primate Adaptation and Evolution , published in 2013 in 1988 , the second edition of which was named “Outstanding Academic Book of 1999” by the American Library Association .

John Fleagle is u. a. Member of the Sigma Xi Scientific Society , the American Association of Physical Anthropologists , the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, and the International Biogeography Society . In 2013 the type species of the genus Rukwapithecus was named in his honor: Rukwapithecus fleaglei .

Fonts (selection)

Books

• with Russell L. Ciochon : Primate Evolution and Human Origins. Routledge, London 1988, ISBN 978-0202011752
• with Russell L. Ciochon: The Human Evolution Source Book. 2nd Edition. Routledge, London 2003, ISBN 978-0130329813
• with Kenneth Christopher Beard and Shawn M. Lehman (Eds.): Primate Biogeography: Progress and Prospects. Springer, 2006, ISBN 978-0-387-29871-9
• with Christopher C. Gilbert (Ed.): Elwyn Simons: A Search for Origins. Springer, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-387-73895-6
• with Frederick E. Grine and Richard E. Leakey (Eds.): The First Humans. Origin and Early Evolution of the Genus Homo. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht 2009, ISBN 978-1-4020-9979-3
• with Kaye Reed and Richard E. Leakey (Eds.): The Paleobiology of Australopithecus. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht 2013, ISBN 978-94-007-5918-3
• with Eric Delson a . a. (Ed.): Out of Africa I. The first Hominin Colonization of Eurasia . Springer Science + Business Media, Dordrecht 2010, ISBN 978-90-481-9036-2
• Primate Adaptation and Evolution. 3. Edition. Academic Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts), 2013, ISBN 978-0123786326

Technical article

• Size distributions of living and fossil primate faunas. In: Paleobiology. Volume 4, No. 1, 1978, pp. 67-76, doi: 10.1017 / S0094837300005698
• with Elwyn L. Simons : Humeral morphology of the earliest apes. In: Nature . Volume 276, 1978, pp. 705-707, doi: 10.1038 / 276705a0
• with Elwyn L. Simons: Micropithecus clarki, a small ape from the Miocene of Uganda. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 49, No. 4, 1978, pp. 427-440, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.1330490402
• Locomotor behavior of the earliest anthropoids: a review of the current evidence. In: Journal of Morphology and Anthropology. Volume 71, No. 2, 1980, pp. 149-156, abstract
• with Richard F. Kay and Elwyn L. Simons: Sexual dimorphism in early anthropoids. In: Nature. Volume 257, 1980, pp. 328-330, doi: 10.1038 / 287328a0
• with Thomas M. Bown, John D. Obradovich and Elwyn L. Simons: Age of the Earliest African Anthropoids. In: Science . Volume 234, No. 4781, 1986, pp. 1247-1249, doi: 10.1126 / science.234.4781.1247 , full text
• with Ian McDougall and Francis H. Brown: Stratigraphic placement and age of modern humans from Kibish, Ethiopia. In: Nature. Volume 433, 2005, pp. 733-736, doi: 10.1038 / nature03258
• as editor: Paleoanthropology of the Kibish Formation, Southern Ethiopia. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 55, No. 3, 2008, pp. 359-530, overview of topics

• A Forty Year Perspective: What Primates Have Taught Us About Being Human. In: Anthroquest. Volume 2, No. 23, The Leakey Foundation 2009, pp. 6-9, full text

literature

• Christopher C. Gilbert: Fleagle, John G. In: The International Encyclopedia of Primatology. Wiley-Blackwell, 2017, ISBN 978-0470673379 , doi: 10.1002 / 9781119179313.wbprim0234

Web links

• Personal web pages on the Stony Brook University server

Individual evidence

1. ^ MacArthur Fellows Program: John G. Fleagle. On: macfound.org , accessed February 3, 2018
2. ↑ John G. Fleagle: Dynamics of a brachiating siamang [Hylobates (Symphalangus) syndactylus]. In: Nature . Volume 248, 1974, pp. 259-260, doi: 10.1038 / 248259a0
3. ↑ John G. Fleagle: Locomotion and Posture of the Malayan Siamang and Implications for Hominoid Evolution. In: Folia Primatologia. Volume 26, No. 4, 1976, pp. 245-269, doi: 10.1159 / 000155756
4. ↑ John G. Fleagle: A small gibbon-like hominoid from the Miocene of Uganda. In: Folia Primatologica. Volume 24, No. 1, 1975, pp. 1-15, doi: 10.1159 / 000155681
5. ↑ John G. Fleagle and Elwyn L. Simons : Micropithecus clarki, a small ape from the Miocene of Uganda. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 49, No. 4, 1978, pp. 427-440, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.1330490402
6. ↑ John G. Fleagle and Elwyn L. Simons: The humerus of Aegyptopithecus zeuxis: A primitive anthropoid. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 59, No. 2, 1982, pp. 175-193, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.1330590207
7. ^ Richard F. Kay, John G. Fleagle and Elwyn L. Simons: A revision of the Oligocene apes from the Fayum Province, Egypt. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 55, No. 3, 1981, pp. 293-322, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.1330550305
8. ↑ Thomas M. Bown, Mary J. Kraus, Scott L. Wing, John G. Fleagle, Bruce H. Tiffney, Elwyn L. Simons, and Carl F. Vondra: The Fayum Primate Forest Revisited. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 11, No. 7, 1982, pp. 603-632, doi: 10.1016 / S0047-2484 (82) 80008-0
9. ^ Meave Leakey , Ari Grossman, Mercedes Gutiérrez, John G. Fleagle: Faunal Change in the Turkana Basin during the Late Oligocene and Miocene. In: Evolutionary Anthropology. Volume 20, No. 6, 2011, pp. 238-253 (Special Issue: The Turkana Basin), doi: 10.1002 / evan.20338
10. ^ Ian McDougall , Francis H. Brown, and John G. Fleagle: Sapropels and the age of hominins Omo I and II, Kibish, Ethiopia. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 55, No. 3, 2008, pp. 409-420, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2008.05.012
11. ^ Nancy J. Stevens et al .: Palaeontological evidence for an Oligocene divergence between Old World monkeys and apes. In: Nature . Volume 497, 2013, pp. 611-614, doi: 10.1038 / nature12161 .