Erik Trinkaus

Erik Trinkaus ( born December 24, 1948) is an American paleoanthropologist and since 1997 professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. Trinkaus was known internationally for his hypotheses on the relationship of Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens).

Life

Erik Trinkaus studied from 1966 until the acquisition of the Bachelor's degree in 1970 from the University of Wisconsin -Madison and then to 1975 at the University of Pennsylvania, where he in 1973 the master's degree with a thesis on A Review of the Reconstructions and Evolutionary Significance of the Fontéchevade Fossils ( Fontéchevade is a Paleolithic archaeological site in France) and 1975 doctoral degree earned with a thesis on a Functional Analysis of the Neandertal Foot.

Between 1975 and 1983 Trinkaus worked as a research assistant at the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. In 1983 he moved in the same capacity at the University of New Mexico, where he was appointed professor in 1987 and remained active until 1997. He then earned a professorship in the Department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, where he holds the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of Anthropology - since 2002.

Trinkaus is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and since 2001 a member of the Academy of Science of Saint Louis since 1996.

Research

Erik Trinkaus researches especially fossils from this epoch about 40,000 years ago when Europe became extinct Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans ( Cro -Magnons ) immigrated from the east. He also deals with the evolution of the anatomical characters of the genus Homo.

Known beyond the circle of professional colleagues Erik Trinkaus addition, because he interprets many hominin fossils from Europe as putative hybrids between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans, such as bone finds from the Romanian karst caves Peştera cu Oase and Peştera Muierii. Together with João Zilhão he believes that Neanderthals and modern humans are often paired. Together with Zilhão Trinkaus wrote to the child of Lagar Velho also from Portugal repeated characteristics of a mixed breed; their interpretations but was back in 1999 - massively contradicted, and the interpretations will continue to be controversial - in the same issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS ) as their first release for the child of Lagar Velho. While also yielded the reconstruction of Neanderthal DNA in 2010, evidence of a - small - gene flow of Neanderthal DNA in the population of anatomically modern humans, however, this gene flow is the scientific publications According comes at a time when in Europe as yet no anatomically modern humans lived.

As an expert in fossils of archaic Homo sapiens and specifically his foot bones Trinkaus also examined findings from Chinese archaeological sites - for example, from Zhirendong and the fossil Tianyuan 1 - and interpreted them as his Chinese counterparts in terms of the hypothesis of the multiregional origin of modern humans.