Donald Johanson :: essays research papers fc

Donald JohansonDonald Johanson was born in Chicago in 1943, the son of Swedish immigrants. His father died when he was two, and his mother moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where he developed an kindle in anthropology from a neighbor who taught the subject. Although he initi entirelyy studied alchemy at university, he eventually switched majors to anthropology, and worked during summers on archeological digs. He transferred to Chicago to cogitation under F. Clark Howell for his graduate studies, doing a comprehensive study on chimpanzee dentition for his doctoral thesis. In 1970 and 1971 he visited Africa to do field work at Omo in Ethiopia. In 1972, he and about colleagues went on a short exploratory expedition evaluate the afar Triangle region of Ethiopia. They were impressed by its promise, and planned a full-scale expedition the following year. Back in the USA, Johanson completed his Ph.D. and started a commandment position at Case Western Reserve University.(Johanson) In 197 3 he discovered AL 129-1, a small only when humanlike knee, and the maiden knee known from the hominid fossil record. The following year, Johanson and Tom grizzly discovered an even more spectacular mark, AL 288-1, a partial derivative skeleton of a female australopithecine better known by its nickname of Lucy. (Farah-Karls, 21). In 1975 there was yet another major find when his team found a collection of fossils at a superstar site that was nicknamed the First Family. In 1976, more hominid fossils were discovered, along with lapidate tools, which, at 2.5 million years, were the oldest in the world. After 1976, political conditions in Ethiopia prevented barely expeditions for nearly 15 years.(Johanson).Johanson, who in 1974 had become a curator at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, now tackled the task of analyzing the fossils with the aid of Tim White, a young but highly regarded scientist who had just finished his Ph.D. Johanson had originally thought that the Hadar fossils were a medley of Homo and Australopithecus specimens, but White eventually convinced him that all of them belonged to just one species. In 1978 they named that species Australopithecus afarensis.(Johanson). In 1981, Johanson founded the Institute of serviceman Origins, a non-profit research institution devoted to the study of prehistory. In 1987, the IHO was precondition permission to conduct an expedition to Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, and found a partial skeleton, OH 62, which is generally attributed to Homo habilis.