Amy Rector

Amy Rector (Col ’00 CM) and her colleagues from the Ledi-Geraru Research Project in northeastern Ethiopia have discovered what could be a new species of Australopithecus, an early hominin species that lived alongside the early human ancestors of the Homo genus two to three million years ago. Rector, a paleontologist at Virginia Commonwealth University, and the other team members discovered and studied a large number of ancient fossilized teeth at the Ledi-Geraru research area, with their findings supporting a view of human evolution as a “tangled-up bush,” rather than a linear timeline. The Ledi-Geraru Research Project and their findings were featured in an article in the Washington Post.