Yves Coppens

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Yves Coppens (2006)

Yves Coppens (born August 9, 1934 in Vannes ) is a French paleontologist and paleoanthropologist . He is a professor at the Collège de France , a member of the Académie des sciences and is considered the most important French researcher in the field of the tribal history of humans and mammals in general . Together with Donald Johanson and Tim White , he published the first description of Australopithecus afarensis in 1978 and was therefore equally at the forefront of research into the skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 , which became famous under the name " Lucy ".

Career

After his school education in Rennes and studying natural sciences and archeology at the Sorbonne in Paris , Yves Coppens (pronounced: Koppénns) went to the Paris Center national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in 1956 and worked at the Institute for Paleontology of the Sorbonne and from 1969 as Vice-Director at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle and the Musée de l'Homme .

For years he spent more than half of the year doing research in Africa and Asia, as a result of which several dozen tons of animal fossils were collected under his leadership from 1960. Among them were around a thousand fossil remains of early pre- humans and other ancestors of modern humans, including Australopithecus afarensis , Paranthropus aethiopicus , Orrorin tugenensis and three other new species . His countless animal finds, especially from 4 to 2 million years ago, contributed, among other things, to a complete description of the evolution of pigs (Suina) and horses (Equidae) as well as hippos . From the change in form of these groups, conclusions could later be drawn about ecological changes in Africa, which also played a decisive role in the incarnation . Outside of specialist circles Coppens became known after the publication of the first description of "Lucy" and the new hominid species Australopithecus afarensis, which was ultimately derived from this find . In his book "The Ancestor's Tale" Richard Dawkins wrote that Coppens is considered to be the discoverer of "Lucy" in his home country, while in the USA this is attributed to Donald Johanson (who shared the skeleton with the then postdoc Tom Gray on November 24th 1974 found).

In 1979 Yves Coppens was appointed Director of the Musée de l'Homme , in 1980 Professor of Anthropology at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle and in 1983 Professor of Paleoanthropology at the Collège de France . He published his research reports mostly in French, which is why he was less well known in the English-speaking area and in Germany as an English-publishing paleoanthropologist.

Research topics

Prof. Yves Coppens in the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt (Nov. 2006)

In addition to intensive field research , Coppens also worked as an evolution theorist. In 1983 he was the first researcher to discuss an ecological hypothesis under the motto East Side Story , which circumstances eight million years ago could have led to the separation of the hominini from the ancestors of the chimpanzees. The name East Side Story alludes to the fact that the Rift Valley emerged at that time , which separated a previously uniform population. This - so the hypothesis - could have had the consequence that the great apes emerged on the west side of the rift valley and the pre-humans on the east side. More recent fossil finds in Chad , among others, have put this hypothesis into perspective, but it had opened the way to intensive studies on the relationship between climate change and species formation.

In 1999 an attempt to explain the development of the australopithecines and the origin of the genus Homo in the Omo region of Ethiopia followed . On the basis of his numerous animal fossil finds from the period 4 to 2 million years ago, Yves Coppens was able to prove that around 2.7 million years ago a long lasting ecological change - the region gradually became increasingly dry and steppe-like - led to the disappearance of numerous animal species and to led to significant changes in the bone structure of the remaining species. For example, the horses reduced the number of their toes (an adaptation to the hard steppe soil), in other herbivores the teeth showed a gradual adaptation to harder grasses. Parallel to this development, it could be shown that the early Australopithecines gave rise to two different species of successor: on the one hand Australopithecus robustus , on the other hand (according to Coppens possibly via Australopithecus anamensis ) the previously unknown first representatives of the genus Homo . The now generally accepted hypothesis goes back to Yves Coppens that Australopithecus robustus emerged from the graceful, early Australopithecines as a result of an adaptation of its chewing tools in particular to a diet of harder steppe grasses, while the genus Homo emerged as a result of the increasingly upright gait, the resulting freeing Hands for tasks other than locomotion and a subsequent enlargement of their skull volume (and - connected to this - the brain) adapted to the changed ecological conditions of East Africa with the help of tools.

Yves Coppens was one of the co-authors of the first description of Sahelanthropus in 2002 .

In 2002, at the express request of the French President Jacques Chirac, he was appointed head of a working group known to the public as the Coppens Commission . Their task was to draw up an environmental charter to supplement the French constitution with requirements for environmental protection . This prominent honorary position, as well as several prime-time films on paleontological topics on French television, led Yves Coppens to become the most famous natural scientist in France in his home country at the age of 70.

Awards

Yves Coppens has received many awards, including a. with the gold medal of the Emperor of Ethiopia (1973), the Grand prix Jaffé of the Académie des Sciences (1974), the Grand prix scientifique of the Fondation de France (1975), the Kalinga Prize of UNESCO (1984) and the Carl Gustaf Bernhard- Medal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1997). He is also an honorary doctor from the Universities of Bologna , Liège , Mons and Chicago .

In 1985 he became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa. Since 1988 he has been a full member of the Academia Europaea . On July 15, 2014, Coppens was appointed a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences .

On March 21, 2008, an asteroid was named after him: (172850) Coppens .

Fonts (selection)

  • Earliest Man and Environments in the Lake Rudolf Basin: Stratigraphy, Paleoecology and Evolution (Prehistoric Archeology and Ecology). University of Chicago Press, 1976, ISBN 0-226-11579-8 .
  • with DC Johanson and TD White: A new Species of the Genus Australopithecus (Primates: Hominidae) from the Pliocene of Eastern Africa. Kirtlandia, No. 28, 1978.
  • The differences between Australopithecus and Homo: preliminary conclusion from the Omo Research Expedition's studies. In: Current Argument on Early Man, report from a Nobel symposium. Pergamon press, 1980, pp. 207-225.
  • with M. Brunat, A. Beauvilain and others: The first australopithecine 2500 kilometers west of the Rift Valley. In: Nature. Volume 378, 1995, pp. 273-275.
  • with B. Senut and others: First hominid from the Miocene (Lukeino formation, Kenya). In: CR Acad. Sci. , Volume 332, Paris 2001, pp. 137-144.
  • Lucy's knees. dtv, 2002, ISBN 3-423-24297-3 .
  • East Side Story, the origin of Humankind. In: Scientific American. April 1994, pp. 88-95.
  • The roots of man. The new image of our origins. Ullstein Taschenbuchverlag, 1987, ISBN 3-548-34426-7 .
  • The origin of man. Translated from the French by Ilse Rothfuß. With illustrations by Sacha Gepner. Carl Hanser Verlag , Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-446-23087-3 .
  • The story of the monkeys. Translated from the French by Stephanie Singh. With illustrations by Sacha Gepner. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-446-23466-6 .
  • The life of early humans. Translated from the French by Ursula Held. With illustrations by Sacha Gepner. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-446-23617-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Camille Arambourg and Yves Coppens: Sur la decouverte dans le Pleistocene inferieur de la valle de l'Omo (Ethiopie) d'une mandibule d'Australopithecien. In: Comptes Rendus des seances de l'Academie des Sciences. Volume 265, 1968, pp. 589-590
    Camille Arambourg and Yves Coppens: Decouverte d'un Australopithecien nouveau dans les gisements de l'Omo (Ethiopia). In: South African Journal of Science. Volume 64, 1968, pp. 58-59
  2. ↑ Michel Brunet et al: A new hominid from the Upper Miocene of Chad, Central Africa. In: Nature , Volume 418, 2002, pp. 145-151, doi: 10.1038 / nature00879
  3. ^ Honorary Fellows. Royal Society of South Africa, accessed April 13, 2020 .
  4. ^ Membership directory: Yves Coppens. Academia Europaea, accessed on August 31, 2017 .
  5. ^ The Pontifical Academy of Sciences: Yves Coppens.
  6. ↑ (172850) Coppens in the Small-Body Database of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (English).
personal data
SURNAME Coppens, Yves
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French paleoanthropologist, co-discoverer of Lucy
DATE OF BIRTH August 9, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Vannes