Alan Walker
Alan Walker
Long After Darwin: Evolution and Our Place in Nature
11/10/09
On November 4th, noted paleoanthropologist Alan Walker led a conversation about evolution at the Penn State Downtown Theatre Center as the fourth event in Research Unplugged's Fall speaker series. The event, titled "Long After Darwin: Evolution and Our Place in Nature," focused on how our view of evolution has changed over the years.
Catching Up with Alan Walker
11/10/09
How did you first become interested in your specialty?
I have been a paleontologist from the age of 11 after finding fossils near my home.
What is the most exciting or fascinating part of your job?
I undertake detective work to find out how extinct animals lived.
What is your favorite aspect of working at Penn State?
I can teach my own research field rather than teach medical students human anatomy.
Where do you see your field 10 years from now?
Research Unplugged kicks off its seventh year on Oct. 14
10/14/09
Research Unplugged begins its 13th season at noon today (Oct. 14), in the gallery of the Penn State Downtown Theatre Centre on Allen Street, State College. The series brings researchers from diverse fields into a casual forum open to the entire community to discuss their field in plain language, with an emphasis on inclusive conversation. The event is free and open to the public.
Researchers piece together an extinct lemur, large as a big babboon
7/28/08
Penn State researchers have used computed tomography (CT) technology to virtually glue newly-discovered skull fragments of a rare extinct lemur back into its partial skull, which was discovered over a century ago. Alan Walker, Evan Pugh professor of anthropology and biology at Penn State, and research associate in anthropology Timothy Ryan led the research. The different fragments of this lemur's skull are separated by thousands of miles, with the partial skull in Vienna and the pieces of frontal bone in the United States. The result of the digital manipulation is a nearly complete skull of Hadropithecus stenognathus, which is one of only two known skulls for this species. An article describing the work will be published in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of July 28 through Aug. 1.
Worth Reading: The Ape in the Tree
12/3/07
Married co-authors Alan Walker and Pat Shipman write in their new book The Ape in the Tree that humans are separated by "at least one million generations" from a creature known as Proconsul, which evolved in Africa during the Miocene era between 21 and 14 million years ago. Proconsul was a 20-pound primate that lived in trees and ate fruits. We know it from a wealth of fossils found at several sites, including ones on Rusinga and Mfangano Islands in Lake Victoria, Kenya, where Walker led a series of archaeological expeditions during the 1980s.
From All Fours
9/1/98
A zebra has its stripes and a giraffe its neck, birds are known by their wings, and a fish by its gills. For humans, it's two feet and a unique locomotion—bipedalism.
A lot of theories try to explain why humans evolved to walk two-legged. Some say that bipedalism let early hominids rise up to see over the savannah grass and check for predators. Others say that having free hands to tend offspring and gather food was the advantage. Herman Pontzer, a biological anthropology major, supports a third idea: Bipedalism may have been the best way to travel.
Missing Links
9/1/98
Standing next to the mounted cast of the boy's skeleton, his hand on his hip, Alan Walker looks a bit smug.The skeleton comes up to Walker's chin. Knock-kneed and complete with a toothy smile, the five-foot-four-inch "Nariokotome boy" (as Walker and the skeleton's other discoverers named him) looks fully human. Only after years of study did Walker, a leading paleoanthropologist, realize that Nariokotome boy is not "one of us."
Long After Darwin: Evolution and Our Place in Nature
11/10/09
On November 4th, noted paleoanthropologist Alan Walker led a conversation about evolution at the Penn State Downtown Theatre Center as the fourth event in Research Unplugged's Fall speaker series. The event, titled "Long After Darwin: Evolution and Our Place in Nature," focused on how our view of evolution has changed over the years.
Catching Up with Alan Walker
11/10/09
How did you first become interested in your specialty?
I have been a paleontologist from the age of 11 after finding fossils near my home.
What is the most exciting or fascinating part of your job?
I undertake detective work to find out how extinct animals lived.
What is your favorite aspect of working at Penn State?
I can teach my own research field rather than teach medical students human anatomy.
Where do you see your field 10 years from now?
Research Unplugged kicks off its seventh year on Oct. 14
10/14/09
Research Unplugged begins its 13th season at noon today (Oct. 14), in the gallery of the Penn State Downtown Theatre Centre on Allen Street, State College. The series brings researchers from diverse fields into a casual forum open to the entire community to discuss their field in plain language, with an emphasis on inclusive conversation. The event is free and open to the public.
Researchers piece together an extinct lemur, large as a big babboon
7/28/08
Penn State researchers have used computed tomography (CT) technology to virtually glue newly-discovered skull fragments of a rare extinct lemur back into its partial skull, which was discovered over a century ago. Alan Walker, Evan Pugh professor of anthropology and biology at Penn State, and research associate in anthropology Timothy Ryan led the research. The different fragments of this lemur's skull are separated by thousands of miles, with the partial skull in Vienna and the pieces of frontal bone in the United States. The result of the digital manipulation is a nearly complete skull of Hadropithecus stenognathus, which is one of only two known skulls for this species. An article describing the work will be published in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of July 28 through Aug. 1.
Worth Reading: The Ape in the Tree
12/3/07
Married co-authors Alan Walker and Pat Shipman write in their new book The Ape in the Tree that humans are separated by "at least one million generations" from a creature known as Proconsul, which evolved in Africa during the Miocene era between 21 and 14 million years ago. Proconsul was a 20-pound primate that lived in trees and ate fruits. We know it from a wealth of fossils found at several sites, including ones on Rusinga and Mfangano Islands in Lake Victoria, Kenya, where Walker led a series of archaeological expeditions during the 1980s.
From All Fours
9/1/98
A zebra has its stripes and a giraffe its neck, birds are known by their wings, and a fish by its gills. For humans, it's two feet and a unique locomotion—bipedalism.
A lot of theories try to explain why humans evolved to walk two-legged. Some say that bipedalism let early hominids rise up to see over the savannah grass and check for predators. Others say that having free hands to tend offspring and gather food was the advantage. Herman Pontzer, a biological anthropology major, supports a third idea: Bipedalism may have been the best way to travel.
Missing Links
9/1/98
Standing next to the mounted cast of the boy's skeleton, his hand on his hip, Alan Walker looks a bit smug.The skeleton comes up to Walker's chin. Knock-kneed and complete with a toothy smile, the five-foot-four-inch "Nariokotome boy" (as Walker and the skeleton's other discoverers named him) looks fully human. Only after years of study did Walker, a leading paleoanthropologist, realize that Nariokotome boy is not "one of us."