Hammond, Ashley

My paleoanthropology research program integrates laboratory, museum, and fieldwork components seeking to address hominin origins and postcranial evolution.

Much of my focus is on identifying the skeletal adaptations that differentiated the earliest human ancestors from apes, specifically related to bipedality. The hominin skeleton documents massive evolutionary transformations and diversity (Grine et al. 2022; Ward et al. 2023), especially in the pelvis (Hammond et al. 2018; Shearer et al. 2019; Ward et al. 2019; Fatica et al. 2019; Hammond et al. 2020; Hammond et al. 2021; Aguilar et al. 2022). My recent work has emphasized the importance of the diverse array of fossil primates for contextualizing origins of bipedality (Hammond et al. 2019; Ward et al. 2019; Almécija et al. 2019; Hammond et al. 2020; Foecke et al. 2022; Pugh et al. 2023). These studies are contributing to a paradigm shift in reconstructing the ancestral condition of hominins so that we no longer see a chimp-like ancestor in all aspects of the morphology and behavior, challenging previous ideas about the trajectory of morphological changes that led to the earliest hominins (Almécija et al. 2021).

I lead paleoanthropological field research in two locations in collaboration with the National Museums of Kenya. (1) I conduct research in Pliocene and Pleistocene-aged areas of East Turkana (“Koobi Fora”) in northern Kenya. My work uses multiple-proxies to characterize hominin morphology, paleoenvironments, and paleoecology and is an exemplar of a multidisciplinary, innovative, and inclusive modern field program (Hammond et al. 2021; Villaseñor et al. 2023). (2) Since 2019, I have led an ambitious new field project at Lemudong’o in southern Kenya, renewing exploration and fieldwork at late Miocene fossil localities. This field site has the potential to yield the earliest hominin fossils, and has already produced new and rare fossil species.

Note: references from last 5 years; see CV for reference detail