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Agustí Ballester, Jordi
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ICREA Research Professor at IPHES (Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social). Humanities
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Ph.D. in Biological Sciences by the University of Barcelona in 1981, under the supervision of Prof. Miquel Crusafont. Director of the Institute of Paleontology M. Crusafont from 1985 to 2005. ICREA Research Professor in the IPHES since 2005. Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona. Narcís Monturiol Medal of the Catalan Gouvernment for his scientific merits. Scientific Literature Prize of the Catalan Gouvernment for his book “El secret de Darwin” (2001). President of the Regional Committee on Neogene Mediterranean Stratiraphy and voting member of the Subcomission on Neogene Stratigraphy (IUGS, UNESCO). Chairman of several national and international projects, among them the ESF-Netwwork on "Hominoid Evolution and Climatic change in the Neogene of Europe" (1996-1999). He has also conducted field-campaigns in northern Africa and Caucasus (Georgia). He has written seven books and edited 11 books. He is the author or co-author of more than 200 papers.
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Research Interest
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My main field of interest is the environmental and biogeographic changes that has taken place in the Mediterranean terrestrial ecosystems in the last 10 milion years. I accomplished this goal throughout the study of a particular group of small mammals, the rodents. Rodents, with up to 2000 species, is the most succesful group of mammals. They are easily found in the fossil localities thanks to the application of micropaleontological techniques, which provide large samples enabling accurate systematic, evolutionary, paleoecological and biostratigraphic analysis. My favourite time-span includes the late Miocene, the Pliocene and the early Pleistocene. This is a key time when the present climatic and environmental conditions originated. It includes a number critical phases, such as the so-called “Vallesian Crisis” at 9.6 Ma, the Messinian Salinity Crisis at 6 Ma, the onset of the Northern Hemisphere Glaciation at 2.6 Ma, the Plio-Pleistocene transition at 1.8 Ma and the early-late Pleistocene transition at 0.8 Ma. All these crisis have modelled the evolution of several groups but, most specially, that of our own lineage, the hominids, which experienced significant changes following these climatic events. My research has therefore been developed in those areas having extraordinary conditions to follow these changes, either in the Iberian peninsula (Vallès-Penedès, Fortuna and Guadix-Baza basins) or outside (northern Africa and, most specially, Georgia). Most of these areas are also key ones in order to elucidate the evolution of our lineage during the last 10 Ma, in relation with the climatic and environmental changes.
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