Agustí Ballester, Jordi
ICREA Research Professor at Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES).
Humanities
Short biography
PhD in Biological Sciences by the Univ. of Barcelona in 1981, under the supervision of Prof. Miquel Crusafont. Director of the Inst. of Paleontology M. Crusafont from 1985 to 2005. ICREA Research Professor at IPHES since 2005. Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona. Narcís Monturiol Medal of the Catalan Government for his scientific merits. Scientific Literature Prize of the Catalan Government for his book "El secret de Darwin" (2001). President of the Regional Committee on Neogene Mediterranean Stratiraphy from 1999 to 2009 and voting member of the Subcomission on Neogene Stratigraphy (IUGS, UNESCO). Chairman of several national and international projects, among them the ESF-Network 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 11 books and edited 13. He is the author or co-author of more than 200 papers.
Research interests
My main field of interest is the environmental and biogeographic changes in the Mediterranean terrestrial ecosystems in the last 10 milion years. I accomplish this goal throughout the study of the fossils of small mammals. This key time includes a number of critical climatic phases, such as the onset of the Northern Hemisphere Glaciation at 2.6 Ma, the early Pleistocene crisis at 1.8 Ma and the early-middle Pleistocene transition at 0.8 Ma. These crises have modelled the evolution 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 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 climatic and environmental changes.