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I was born and raised in upstate
New York, and owe my interest in natural history to my upbringing
on a farm. I learned about plants, animals, and the stars from
my parents, who inspired and promoted my interest in science
from a young age. I particularly enjoyed looking for fossils
in the beds of small creeks on our property, and digging for
“relics” under the trees near our house.
Although
watching television was not a major part of my upbringing, I
vividly remember watching a National Geographic special aired
in the mid-1960s on the famous paleontologist, Louis Leakey,
and his explorations and discoveries at Olduvai Gorge in East
Africa. This program, with its dramatic view of the ancient
hominid then called Zinjanthropus boisei or “The
Nutcracker Man” ignited my imagination like nothing had
ever done before. I immediately proclaimed to my mother that,
“That is what I want to do when I grow up.”
I have had an insatiable curiosity about human evolution ever
since, and have had the tremendous good fortune of being able
to follow the dream that Leakey’s program inspired that
night. I pursued an undergraduate degree in biology at Bryn
Mawr College, concentrating on the then nascent field of molecular
biology. Despite my parents’ wishes for me to attend medical
school, I was pulled in another and far less practical direction.
Having enjoyed undergraduate courses in anthropology, I realized
that my heart was really in the study of human evolution.
I elected to go to graduate school at The University of Washington
in biological anthropology, hoping at the time to specialize
in the emerging field of molecular evolution. Although this
was an appealing possibility, I found myself increasingly drawn
to studies of comparative anatomy and paleontology. What I saw
in these fields was the potential to reconstruct the appearance
and lifestyles of animals long extinct, including our closest
nonhuman and human relatives. It did not take me long to settle
on a dissertation topic involving the anatomical study of the
masticatory apparatus of a little-known living monkey, Theropithecus
gelada, that was the only living representative of a diverse
and highly successful lineage of large African monkeys during
the Pliocene and Pleistocene.
My Ph.D. research took me to interesting places, including the
Department of Anatomy at the University of Hong Kong, where
I undertook dissections of a large collection of the gelada,
and developed an interest in living overseas. Upon completion
of my doctorate, I took my first professional job as a Lecturer
in that department, a position that I held from 1981 through
1990. In the 1980s, it was common for biological anthropologists
and paleontologists to be employed as teachers of gross anatomy
in medical schools. I was fortunate to be hired by a department
that allowed me to pursue my research in paleontology and comparative
anatomy, even though it was not considered mainstream biomedical
research.
Living in Hong Kong during the early years of the re-opening
of China to outside thought and commerce was a research anthropologist's
dream. I realized that many of the nonhuman primates of China
were very poorly known to science, and that it might be worth
pursuing research on them. Beginning in 1982, I cultivated a
professional relationship with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology
and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, and then in 1984 with the
Kunming Institute of Zoology. Thanks to forward-looking administrators
at both institutions, it was possible for me to begin to undertake
collaborative research at both institutions – relationships
which I have maintained to the present day.
During the latter 1980s and early 1990s, my research concentrated
on the evolution of Old World monkeys in East Asia, with an
emphasis on the evolution of the endemic species of China. Research
on the living snub-nosed monkeys and their antecedents occupied
much of my time because virtually everything that we studied
about the animals was new to science. At the same time that
I was pursuing this research, I developed a strong interest
in the integration of paleoenvironmental and paleontological
research. I was strongly motivated by the concept of examining
the relationships between environmental change and changes in
animal diversity, distributions, and anatomies. Because of the
excellent record of environmental change known from geological,
geochronological and paleobotanical data for the late Tertiary
and Quaternary in China, integration of data on fossil occurrences
and anatomies with environmental data was possible, and yielded
results of great interest and import. This is one of the most
interesting and fertile areas in paleontology today.
In 1990, I relocated to Australia with my husband, George Chaplin,
and spent the next four years teaching in the Department of
Anatomy and Human Biology at The University of Western Australia
in Perth. These were extremely productive, and in hindsight
momentous, years because they marked my transition from a “bones
only” paleontologist to a more broadly based evolutionary
anthropologist and paleobiologist. It was during those years
that I began research on the evolution of human bipedalism and
the evolution of human skin color, two of the longest standing
research problems in anthropology. These research programs began
by accident, not design, but I quickly realized that research
on these topics was clearly needed. The evolution of bipedalism
and skin color, like many others in biological anthropology,
is avoided by most professionals because it is assumed that
they are intractable – that we will never have the data
necessary to prove any given hypotheses or theories –
and that it is folly to even address them because the results
are just “fairy stories”. It has always been my
opinion that research on such topics was worthwhile because
one could, using the robust tools of comparative and historical
biology, make logical deductions about what probably happened
in the past. By looking at all the comparative anatomical, physiological,
environmental, behavioral and other data available, one could
determine how consistent the predictions of various hypotheses
were with the facts provided by living organisms. This premise
is the foundation of my research on evolution of bipedalism
and human skin color.
I took up my current position as the Irvine Chair of Anthropology
at the California Academy of Sciences in late 1994. I am very
happy and lucky to hold a position as a professional anthropologist
and paleobiologist, in an institution that prizes both long-term,
basic research and fieldwork. My appointment at the Cal Academy
permits me to pursue diverse research interests, and ones that
often require long periods of work overseas. I have been able
to pursue paleontological research in late Tertiary and Quaternary
sites in a number of countries, including Pakistan, Nepal, China,
and Kenya.
Although my greatest interest in paleontology is in the fossil
record of Old World monkeys, virtually everything I find ignites
my interest. I am currently involved in five research initiatives:
human and primate evolution,
evolution of Old World monkeys,
evolution of bipedalism in the human
lineage, evolution of human skin
coloration, and evolution
of environments and mammalian faunas of East Asia.
My abiding interest remains much as it was when I was a child
– to reconstruct the appearance of animals, including
humans, long extinct and re-create for myself and others the
intricacies of past environments.
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(Click here to view Nina
G. Jablonski's full curriculum vitae.)
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