Affiliation: Human Origins Program, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
Dr. Briana Pobiner is a paleoanthropologist in the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History whose research centers on the evolution of human diet, with a focus on meat-eating. She has done fieldwork or collections research in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Indonesia, Romania, Czech Republic, and the US. Her favorite field moments include watching a pride of lions eat a zebra carcass on the equator and discovering fossil bones that were last touched, butchered and eaten by one of her 1.5-million-year-old ancestors. Since joining the Smithsonian in 2005 to help put together the Hall of Human Origins, in addition to continuing her active field, laboratory, and experimental research programs, she leads the Human Origins Program’s education and outreach efforts which includes managing the Human Origins Program’s public programs, website content, social media, and exhibition volunteer training. She is the recipient of the 2024 Evolution Education Award from the National Association of Biology Teachers, the 2021 Communication & Outreach Award from the American Association of Physical Anthropology and Leakey Foundation, and a 2021 Friend of Darwin Award from the National Center for Science Education. Briana is also an Associate Research Professor of Anthropology in the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology at the George Washington University.
The modern “paleo” diet movement makes many assumptions about what our ancient humans ate. But are these assumptions accurate, based on what we know about past diets? Presenting a variety of lines of evidence for prehistoric human diets including early human, animal, and plant fossils, ancient stone tools, DNA, and living human and chimpanzee diets, Dr. Briana Pobiner will discuss significant changes in the evolution of human diets–and highlight what makes human meat-eating unique.
