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Yves Coppens
Yves Coppens (9 August 1934 – 22 June 2022) was a French anthropologist. A graduate from the University of Rennes and Sorbonne, he studied ancient hominids and had multiple published works on this topic, and also produced a film. In October 2014, Coppens was named an Ordinary Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences by Pope Francis. Scientific work He was Professor at the College de France, which is considered to be France's most prestigious research establishment. Richard Dawkins makes the following observation in ''The Ancestor's Tale'': "Incidentally, I don't know what to make of the fact that in his native France, Yves Coppens is widely cited as the discoverer of Lucy, even as the 'father' of Lucy. In the English-speaking world, this important discovery is universally attributed to Donald Johanson". This confusion is because Coppens was the former director of the Hadar expedition. Donald Johanson, who led the 1974 expedition, was the one who found Lucy. The "Rift Va ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doctor Of Science
Doctor of Science ( la, links=no, Scientiae Doctor), usually abbreviated Sc.D., D.Sc., S.D., or D.S., is an academic research degree awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. In some countries, "Doctor of Science" is the degree used for the standard doctorate in the sciences; elsewhere the Sc.D. is a "higher doctorate" awarded in recognition of a substantial and sustained contribution to scientific knowledge beyond that required for a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). Africa Algeria and Morocco In Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia, all universities accredited by the state award a "Doctorate" in all fields of science and humanities, equivalent to a PhD in the United Kingdom or United States. Some universities in these four Arab countries award a "Doctorate of the State" in some fields of study and science. A "Doctorate of the State" is slightly higher in esteem than a regular doctorate, and is awarded after performing additional in-depth post-doctorate research or ach ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pontifical Academy Of Sciences
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences ( it, Pontificia accademia delle scienze, la, Pontificia Academia Scientiarum) is a scientific academy of the Vatican City, established in 1936 by Pope Pius XI. Its aim is to promote the progress of the mathematical, physical, and natural sciences and the study of related epistemological problems. The Accademia Pontificia dei Nuovi Lincei ("Pontifical Academy of the New Lynxes") was founded in 1847 as a more closely supervised successor to the Accademia dei Lincei ("Academy of Lynxes") established in Rome in 1603 by the learned Roman Prince, Federico Cesi (1585–1630), who was a young botanist and naturalist, and which claimed Galileo Galilei as its president. The Accademia dei Lincei survives as a wholly separate institution. The Academy of Sciences, one of the Pontifical academies at the Vatican in Rome, is headquartered in the Casina Pio IV in the heart of the Vatican Gardens. History Cesi wanted his academicians to adhere to a resear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chad
Chad (; ar, تشاد , ; french: Tchad, ), officially the Republic of Chad, '; ) is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon to the southwest, Nigeria to the southwest (at Lake Chad), and Niger to the west. Chad has a population of 16 million, of which 1.6 million live in the capital and largest city of N'Djamena. Chad has several regions: a desert zone in the north, an arid Sahelian belt in the centre and a more fertile Sudanian Savanna zone in the south. Lake Chad, after which the country is named, is the second-largest wetland in Africa. Chad's official languages are Arabic and French. It is home to over 200 different ethnic and linguistic groups. Islam (55.1%) and Christianity (41.1%) are the main religions practiced in Chad. Beginning in the 7th millennium BC, human populations moved into the Chadian basin in great numbe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toumaï
''Sahelanthropus tchadensis'' is an extinct species of the Homininae (African apes) dated to about , during the Miocene epoch. The species, and its genus ''Sahelanthropus'', was announced in 2002, based mainly on a partial cranium, nicknamed ''Toumaï'', discovered in northern Chad. ''Sahelanthropus tchadensis'' lived close to the time of the chimpanzee–human divergence, possibly related to ''Orrorin'', a species of Homininae that lived about one million years later. It may have been ancestral to both humans and chimpanzees (which would place it in the tribe Hominini), or alternatively an early member of the tribe Gorillini. In 2020, the femur was analyzed, and it was found that ''Sahelanthropus'' was not bipedal, casting some doubt on its position as a human ancestor, but this was refuted in 2022. Taxonomy Discovery Funded by the Mission Paléoanthropologique Franco–Tchadienne, Ahounta Djimdoumalbaye, Fanoné Gongdibé, Mahamat Adoum, and Alain Beauvilain identified the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michel Brunet (paleontologist)
Michel Brunet (born April 6, 1940) is a French paleontologist and a professor at the Collège de France. In 2001 Brunet announced the discovery in Central Africa of the skull and jaw remains of a late Miocene hominid nicknamed Toumaï. These remains may predate the earliest previously known hominid remains, Lucy, by over three million years; however, this conclusion is the subject of a significant controversy. Biography Brunet was born in 1940 in Vienne, in the region of Poitou. After having passed his first years in the countryside, at 8 he moved with his family to Versailles. He took a Ph.D. in paleontology at the Sorbonne and then became Professor of Vertebrate paleontology at the University of Poitiers, specializing in hoofed mammals. A turning point in Brunet's career was when he heard that paleoanthropologist David Pilbeam was searching for fossil apes in Pakistan and the ancestors of the hominids. This spurred Brunet to form with his colleague Emile Heintz a team with th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sahelanthropus Tchadensis
''Sahelanthropus tchadensis'' is an extinct species of the Homininae (African apes) dated to about , during the Miocene epoch. The species, and its genus ''Sahelanthropus'', was announced in 2002, based mainly on a partial cranium, nicknamed ''Toumaï'', discovered in northern Chad. ''Sahelanthropus tchadensis'' lived close to the time of the chimpanzee–human divergence, possibly related to ''Orrorin'', a species of Homininae that lived about one million years later. It may have been ancestral to both humans and chimpanzees (which would place it in the tribe Hominini), or alternatively an early member of the tribe Gorillini. In 2020, the femur was analyzed, and it was found that ''Sahelanthropus'' was not bipedal, casting some doubt on its position as a human ancestor, but this was refuted in 2022. Taxonomy Discovery Funded by the Mission Paléoanthropologique Franco–Tchadienne, Ahounta Djimdoumalbaye, Fanoné Gongdibé, Mahamat Adoum, and Alain Beauvilain identified the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australopithecus Bahrelghazali
''Australopithecus bahrelghazali'' is an extinct species of australopithecine discovered in 1995 at Koro Toro, Bahr el Gazel, Chad, existing around 3.5 million years ago in the Pliocene. It is the first and only australopithecine known from Central Africa, and demonstrates that this group was widely distributed across Africa as opposed to being restricted to East and southern Africa as previously thought. The validity of ''A. bahrelghazali'' has not been widely accepted, in favour of classifying the specimens as ''A. afarensis'', a better known Pliocene australopithecine from East Africa, because of the anatomical similarity and the fact that ''A. bahrelghazali'' is known only from 3 partial jawbones and an isolated premolar. The specimens inhabited a lakeside grassland environment with sparse tree cover, possibly similar to the modern Okavango Delta, and similarly predominantly ate C4 savanna foods—such as grasses, sedges, storage organs, or rhizomes—and to a lesser degree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adriaan Kortlandt
Prof. Dr. Adriaan Kortlandt (25 January 1918, Rotterdam - 18 October 2009, Amsterdam) was a Dutch ethologist. He was famous for his work on displacement activities (Dutch: ''overspronggedrag)'' and the hierarchy of instincts. Already in the thirties he realised the common characteristics between instincts in humans and other animals. In one of his experiments in Western Africa he exposed a stuffed panther with an electronic moving head to chimpanzees, who attacked it with sticks, thus illustrating to which extent early man could have kept wild animals at bay even before spears and other weapons were invented. He also was the author of the "Rift Valley theory",Kortlandt, A. (1972) - ''New perspectives on ape and human evolution'', Amsterdam, Stichting voor Psychobiologie. better known under the name given by French paleoanthropologist Yves Coppens Yves Coppens (9 August 1934 – 22 June 2022) was a French anthropologist. A graduate from the University of Rennes and Sorbonne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rift Valley Theory
In geology, a rift is a linear zone where the lithosphere is being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics. Typical rift features are a central linear downfaulted depression, called a graben, or more commonly a half-graben with normal faulting and rift-flank uplifts mainly on one side. Where rifts remain above sea level they form a rift valley, which may be filled by water forming a rift lake. The axis of the rift area may contain volcanic rocks, and active volcanism is a part of many, but not all, active rift systems. Major rifts occur along the central axis of most mid-ocean ridges, where new oceanic crust and lithosphere is created along a divergent boundary between two tectonic plates. ''Failed rifts'' are the result of continental rifting that failed to continue to the point of break-up. Typically the transition from rifting to spreading develops at a triple junction where three converging rifts meet over a hotspot. Two of these evolve to the point of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australopithecus Afarensis
''Australopithecus afarensis'' is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived from about 3.9–2.9 million years ago (mya) in the Pliocene of East Africa. The first fossils were discovered in the 1930s, but major fossil finds would not take place until the 1970s. From 1972 to 1977, the International Afar Research Expedition—led by anthropologists Maurice Taieb, Donald Johanson and Yves Coppens—unearthed several hundreds of hominin specimens in Hadar, Ethiopia, the most significant being the exceedingly well-preserved skeleton AL 288-1 ("Lucy") and the site AL 333 ("the First Family"). Beginning in 1974, Mary Leakey led an expedition into Laetoli, Tanzania, and notably recovered fossil trackways. In 1978, the species was first described, but this was followed by arguments for splitting the wealth of specimens into different species given the wide range of variation which had been attributed to sexual dimorphism (normal differences between males and females). ''A. afa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Ancestor's Tale
''The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life'' is a science book by Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong on the subject of evolution, which follows the path of humans backwards through evolutionary history, describing some of humanity's cousins as they converge on their common ancestors. The book was first published in 2004 and substantially updated in 2016. It was nominated for the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. Synopsis The book takes a different path backwards through evolution and meets different groupings of organisms. The authors use backward chronology instead of a forward chronology as a way of celebrating the unity of life. In a backward chronology, the ancestors of any set of species must eventually meet at a particular moment. The last common ancestor is the one that they all share which the authors call a "concestor". The oldest concestor is the ancestor of all surviving life forms on this planet. The evidence for this is that all organisms share the sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An atheist, he is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book ''The Selfish Gene'', which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term '' meme''. With his book ''The Extended Phenotype'' (1982), he introduced into evolutionary biology the influential concept that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, for example, when a beaver builds a dam. His 2004 The Ancestor's Tale set out to make understanding evolution simple for the general public, by tracing common ancestors back from humans to the origins of life. Over time, numerous religious people challenged th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
