The San Juan Basin Archaeological Society invites the public to a presentation in the Lyceum at the Center of Southwest Studies and on Zoom on Wednesday, January 10 at 7:00 pm. At 6:30 we will have social time, then after a brief business meeting, Dr. John Kappelman, Professor Emeritus at UT Austin, will give a talk about Lucy, the 3.2-million-year-old fossil found in Ethiopia. The talk is titled "How Lucy lived, and died, and why it matters.". For log-in information go to SJBAS.ORG.

Brief abstract: "Lucy," a 3.2-million-year-old specimen of Australopithecus afarensis that was discovered in Ethiopia, is arguably the most famous fossil on planet Earth. She has been at the center of a nearly 50 year long debate about whether early hominins were exclusively biped, or also spent time in the trees. In this lecture, I will present our studies that aim to resolve the debate about how she lived, and also discuss intriguing data that point to how she died.

John Kappelman was born and raised on a small family farm in southwestern Idaho. He received a B.S. in Geology and Geophysics from Yale University, and an M.A. in Anthropology and Ph.D. in Anthropology and Earth and Planetary Sciences, both from Harvard University. He recently retired after serving for 35 years as a professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, and continues his association with UT Austin as Professor Emeritus. The primary focus of his research is ape and human origins and evolution, with particular emphasis in paleoecology and functional morphology, and stratigraphy and geochronology. He conducts field and laboratory research in paleontology, stratigraphy, and paleomagnetism, and laboratory research in functional morphology and computer imaging. He has worked all around the world, and runs current field projects in Kenya and Ethiopia. He and his lab members have built many web sites including eSkeletons, eLucy, eFossils, and eAnthro Labs. For the past 20 years, he split his time between Austin and Pagosa Springs, and now resides full time at the Frying Pan Lazy K ranch outside of Pagosa Springs. He has visited Dawn Mulhern's classes several times.