David Pilbeam (born 21 November 1940 in Brighton, Sussex,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
) is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
.
Biography
Pilbeam has produced numerous publications related to hominoid evolution since the mid-1960s, with some of his papers reprinted in later books.
In the 1970s, he was a co-discoverer, in the Potwar Plateau of Pakistan, of a nearly complete skull subsequently described as belonging to '' Sivapithecus indicus'', an extinct Late Miocene great ape, on which he published several papers.
In 2005, in honour of his 65th birthday, Pilbeams' students, colleagues, collaborators and friends assembled a collection to honour his work.1st brief description of book2nd brief description of book /ref> Pilbeam himself later contributed to a paper honouring Ofer Bar-Yosef.
In the summer of 2007, Pilbeam was appointed interim dean of Harvard College. He oversaw the continuing process of redesigning the undergraduate curriculum, as well as a large increase in financial aid to students and the planning of a housing renewal project. Pilbeam's decision to end reimbursement of social events which provide alcohol was largely unpopular among students.
Pilbeam describes himself as "interested in a wide range of topics involving human and primate evolution". Among his most recent activities has been working with Michel Brunet and colleagues on the description and analysis of the new hominin from Chad, Sahelanthropus tchadensis. He describes his long-term and continuing interests as including "the behavioral reconstruction and phylogenetic relationships of Miocene apes, which broadens to include more theoretical aspects of phylogenetics", and "the analysis of faunal change and its relationship to environmental change" particularly based on an extensive faunal record from the Neogene Siwalik Series of Pakistan. He also describes himself as having recently become interested in evolutionary developmental biology, and particularly in the development and evolution of the anthropoid
axial skeleton
The axial skeleton is the part of the skeleton that consists of the bones of the head and trunk of a vertebrate. In the human skeleton, it consists of 80 bones and is composed of six parts; the skull (22 bones), also the ossicles of the middle ...
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Honors
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International Prize (Fyssen Foundation) The International Prize (French: ''Prix International'') of the Fyssen Foundation is a science award that has been given annually since 1980 to a scientist who has conducted distinguished research in the areas supported by the foundation such as eth ...
David Pilbeam has written and contributed to numerous papers, the bulk of which are listed below:
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m. PDF fulltextSupporting Tables
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Books
Pilbeam also authored, co-authored, edited and contributed to (e.g. in forewords) books, with some key publications below.
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o. (Reprint of 1968 article in Nature).
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Book review