Yves Coppens

Yves Coppens ( born August 9, 1934 in Vannes ) is a French paleontologist and paleoanthropologist. He is a professor at the Collège de France, member of the Académie des sciences and is considered the most important French researchers in the field of evolutionary history of humans and mammals in general. Together with Donald Johanson and Tim White in 1978 he published the first description of Australopithecus afarensis, and was therefore equally a leader in the exploration of the 1974 discovered in Ethiopia skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis involved, which became famous under the name " Lucy".

Career

After his schooling in Rennes and the study of natural sciences and archeology at the Sorbonne in Paris went Yves Coppens (pronounced Koppénns ) in 1956 to the Paris Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS ) and was appointed to the Institute of Paleontology at the Sorbonne, and from 1969 as Vice - Director of the Muséum national d' histoire naturelle and the Musée de l' Homme.

For years he kept more than half of the year to research stays in Africa and Asia, which were collected several dozen tons of animal fossils from 1960 under his leadership. To them, among other things, were about a thousand fossil remains of early hominids and other ancestors of modern humans, including Australopithecus afarensis, Paranthropus aethiopicus, Orrorin tugenensis and three new species. His countless animal finds particularly from the period of 4-2 million years ago among others, contributed to a seamless description of the evolution of the swine -like ( Suina ) and horses (Equidae ) and the hippopotamus. From the shape change of these groups could be closed later on ecological changes in Africa, also played a crucial role in the Incarnation. Known outside specialist circles Coppens was after the publication of the first description of "Lucy" and the ultimately derived from this find new hominid species Australopithecus afarensis. In his book "The Ancestor 's Tale " wrote Richard Dawkins that Coppens in his home is considered the discoverer of "Lucy", while this is attributed in the U.S. Donald Johanson ( the skeleton together with then post-doctoral Tom Gray on 30 November 1974 found ).

1979 Yves Coppens was appointed director of the Musée de l' Homme in 1980 as Professor of Anthropology at the Muséum national d' histoire naturelle and in 1983 professor of paleoanthropology at the Collège de France. He published his research papers mostly in French, so he was less known in the English-speaking world and in Germany as an English publishing paleoanthropologists.

Research Topics

In addition to intensive field research Coppens operated as an evolutionary theorist. In 1983 he discussed with the slogan East Side Story the first researcher an ecological hypothesis, what circumstances could have resulted from the ancestors of chimpanzees for separating the Hominini to eight million years ago. The term East Side Story alludes to the fact that at that time the Rift Valley was created that divided a previously uniform population. This - it is hypothesis - could have had the consequence that on the west side of the grave breach caused the apes and on the east side of the pre-human. Recent fossil finds, inter alia, in Chad have this hypothesis: while they have seen in perspective, however, she had opened the way for intensive studies on the relationship between climate change and species formation.

In 1999 followed a tentative explanation for the development of the australopithecines and the origin of the genus Homo in the Omo region of Ethiopia. Due to its numerous animal fossil finds from the time millions before 4-2 years, Yves Coppens was able to prove that before about 2.7 million years ago, a long-lasting ecological change - the region gradually became drier and steppe -like - to the disappearance of many species of animals and significant changes in the bone structure of the remaining species led. For example, the horses reduced the number of their toes ( an adaptation to the harsh steppe ), other herbivores teeth showed a gradual adaptation to tougher grasses. Parallel to this development was detectable that emerged from the early australopithecines two different succession ways: first Australopithecus robustus, on the other hand (according to Coppens may have Australopithecus anamensis ) the hitherto unknown first representatives of the genus Homo. On Yves Coppens thus far generally accepted hypothesis goes back that Australopithecus robustus as a result of adaptation specifically of its mandibles emerged on a diet of tougher plains grasses from the delicate, early australopithecines, while the genus Homo, following the increasingly upright gait, the caused thereby vacant during the hands for other tasks as locomotion and finally a subsequent increase in its skull volume ( and - by extension - of the brain) is conformed with the help of tool use to changing ecological conditions of East Africa.

Yves Coppens, 2002 was one of the co -authors of the first description of Sahelanthropus tchadensis.

In 2002 he was appointed at the express request of the French President Jacques Chirac to become known as the leader of a Commission Coppens in the public relations group. Their task was to draw up an Environmental Charter to the French constitution with provisions for environmental protection to supplement. This prominent volunteering as well as several prime time French television broadcast films on paleontological subjects meant that Yves Coppens was in his home country the most famous scientist of France at the age of 70 years.

Awards

Yves Coppens has received many awards, among others, the Gold Medal of the Emperor of Ethiopia ( 1973), the Grand Prix Jaffé the Académie des Sciences ( 1974), the Grand Prix scientifique of the Fondation de France ( 1975), the Kalinga Prize by UNESCO (1984 ) and the Carl Gustaf Bernhard - medal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ( 1997). He is also honorary doctorates from the universities of Bologna, Liège, Mons and Chicago.

Works

  • Yves Coppens: Earliest Man and Environments in the Lake Rudolf Basin: Stratigraphy, Paleoecology and Evolution ( Prehistoric Archaeology and Ecology ). University of Chicago Press, 1976, ISBN 0-226-11579-8.
  • DC Johanson, TD White, Y. Coppens: A new species of the genus Australopithecus (Primates: Hominidae ) from the Pliocene of Eastern Africa. Kirtlandia, No. 28, 1978.
  • Yves Coppens: The differences in between Australopithecus and Homo: preliminary conclusion from the Omo Research Expedition's studies. In: Current Argument on Early Man, report from a Nobel symposium. Pergamon press, 1980, pp. 207-225.
  • M. Brunat, A. Beauvilain, Y Coppens, among others: The first australopithecine 2500 kilometers west of the Rift Valley. In: Nature. Volume 378, 1995, pp. 273-275.
  • B. Senut, Y. Coppens, among other things: First hominid from the Miocene ( Lukeino formation, Kenya ). In: C. R. Acad. Sci., Volume 332, Paris 2001, pp. 137-144.
  • Yves Coppens: Lucy's knee. dtv, 2002, ISBN 3-423-24297-3.
  • Yves Coppens: East Side Story, the Origin of Humankind. In: Scientific American. April 1994, pp. 88-95.
  • Yves Coppens: The roots of man. The new image of our origin. Ullsteinhaus paperback Verlag, 1987, ISBN 3-548-34426-7.
  • Yves Coppens: The Origin of Man. From the French by Ilse Rothfuss. With illustrations by Sacha Gepner. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich, 2008.
  • Yves Coppens: The story of the monkeys. From the French by Stephanie Singh. With illustrations by Sacha Gepner. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-446-23466-6.
  • Yves Coppens: The life of early man. From the French by Ursula hero. With illustrations by Sacha Gepner. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-446-23617-2.
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