Yohannes Haile-Selassie
Yohannes Haile - Selassie ( Amharic ዮሀንስ ኃይለ ሥላሴ born February 23, 1961 in Adigrat, Ethiopia ) is an Ethiopian paleoanthropologist. He was known by several finds of early hominids, including the type specimen designated by him kind Ardipithecus kadabba in professional circles. He explores mainly the fossil fields along the Awash River in what is called the Afar triangle.
Training
Yohannes Haile - Selassie grew up without a father and without siblings, and lived from the age of nine with changing relative. At the age of 17 he began to study History in Addis Ababa - the field had been given him by the authorities. In 1982 he acquired in the Bachelor's degree. As consideration for the then school fees free in Ethiopia college attendance, the graduates were obliged then to work at least two years in government service; Yohannes Haile - Selassie was assigned to the Ministry of Culture and got his job at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa.
His work coincided with the beginning of a moratorium, which should serve to protect the cultural heritage of Ethiopia and the other members until 1981 excavation permits for foreign paleoanthropologists exposed to 1990. This affected was especially Donald Johanson in Hadar project as well as the 1981 only begun preparation by John Desmond Clark and Tim White of the Middle Awash project. Haile Selassie learned these researchers know, because he had to clean the stored there fossils in the museum and to order. The study of the bones found sparked his interest in paleoanthropology, so he bought his books and is appropriated some knowledge through self-study.
Berhane Asfaw was given in 1988, who had just purchased the first Ethiopians a doctoral degree in anthropology, a dispensation to explore new paläoanthropologischer archaeological sites. Haile Selassie, the laboratory worked for Paleoanthropology of the Ethiopian National Museum since 1985 as a research assistant, was seconded as an officer of the Ministry of Culture for this research team. In the same position he was in 1990 and 1991 worked with Tim White at the Middle Awash for the resumed Middle Awash Research Project and convincingly proving his skill at finding hominin fossils. Berhane Asfaw, who was director of the National Museum since 1990, and Tim White advised Haile Selassie to an application for a scholarship in the U.S., which was granted to him from 1992 by the Wenner-Gren Foundation.
Therefore, Yohannes Haile - Selassie took his academic training again and acquired in 1995 at the University of California, Berkeley, the first master's degree in anthropology. Him the doctorate degree was awarded in the subject Integrative Biology, due to its 2001 study under the guidance of Tim White "Late Miocene Mammalian Fauna from the Middle Awash Valley, Ethiopia ".
Since 2002, directs Haile Selassie as curator of the Department of Physical Anthropology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Cleveland, USA. At the same time he was appointed Adjunct Assistant appointed Professor of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University.
Research
Yohannes Haile - Selassie worked from the beginning in the Middle Awash project and discovered, among other things, the first fossil finds from Ardipithecus kadabba. On November 5, 1994, he was also the first two fragments of the " Ardi " mentioned, 4,4 million year old skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus. He further discovered in November 1997, the type specimen - a 2.5 million year old skull - of Australopithecus Garhi. But His field of work also includes more generally, the vertebrate paleontology of East Africa and their evolution in the Upper Miocene and the paleobiogeography and paleoecology which this epoch.