C. Owen Lovejoy

Advanced the fields of biological anthropology, biomechanics, developmental biology, human paleontology, palaeodemography and forensic medicine. Work on the skeletal biology of early Australopithecus fossils, particularly the series recovered from Hadar in the 1970s, demonstrated habitual bipedality arose millions of years before stone tool use or brain expansion. Formulated an alternative model incorporating human physiology, biogeography, and non-human primate anatomy, behavior, demography, ecology and paleontology. This model continues to structure thought in human evolutionary studies. Provided primary description and analysis of recently discovered Ardipithecus ramidus fossils, projected their social structure and analyzed their relation to the last common ancestor of humans and the African apes. With laboratory teams, developed new techniques during the 1980s that are now routinely employed by human osteologists, paleoanthropologists and forensic scientists to accurately establish individual identity and skeletal demographic characters. Worked on the identification of human footprints for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Developed techniques to accurately ascertain sexual dimorphism among fossil hominid remains, and pioneered the application of research in developmental biology to issues of human origins and evolution.